The Florentine Emerald: The Secret of the Convert's Ring

by Agustín Bernaldo Palatchi

  Mauricio felt slightly comforted. He and his wife were not that different, just that once in a while Lorena underwent a kind of mystical ecstasy as their bodies joined together. It seemed like a contradiction, although according to his ancestor Abraham Abulafia, making love was also a door through which it was possible to reach God, which is very similar to what his wife had expressed. Why not follow her advice? He desired his wife more than ever today and the worst that could happen was that he experienced the same pleasure he already knew, which he always enjoyed so much.

  Mauricio threw himself into the rituals of lovemaking with the flair of a thoroughbred horse. His panting and heavy breathing was reminiscent of a glossy steed galloping wild and carefree. Lorena rhythmically answered his thrusts with her hips, her eyes half-closed, a smile lighting up her face. It was then that Mauricio remembered what his wife had told him. What if he were to try something different from usual? His body resisted, but his curiosity got the better of him so he finally reined in the horse he was galloping.

  He took a deep breath and slowed his pace. Lorena varied her pelvic movements, transforming them into something utterly magical. He felt his member being gripped and pulled into her, even though he was hardly moving his body. In that way, and with less effort on his part, he could feel his masculinity was stirring spasmodically, discovering an unexplored paradise. Mauricio was also smiling in total ecstasy, preparing himself for the wave to surge onto the shore.

  “Try and make the energy rise upward,” Lorena whispered, just before the pleasurable contractions that were massaging his member disappeared completely.

  His disappointment was brief, because shortly afterward Lorena reinitiated her movements and Mauricio rose again to the occasion and joined once more in their intimate dance. Mauricio controlled his impulses and instead of acting like a rider spurring his horse toward victory, he followed the advice of his wife by maintaining the same rhythm, expanding his consciousness toward his navel, stomach, and later to his chest and back. To his surprise, it seemed to be working. He was still excited but the anxiety had disappeared now and the erotic energy was spreading harmonically throughout his body, the “coiled serpent” his wife had mentioned. Mauricio found it was more like a vibration, filling every pore of his body until it finally reached his head.

  Both found themselves linked in a continuous circle in which the mind had no room for idle chatter. This contentment was timeless.

  However, after having made love, a great darkness descended upon their lives. A hammering on the door of the palazzo announced the arrival of the ufficiali di notte, the night officials and custodians of morality. Perhaps respecting this morality, which they so jealously guarded, they conceded Mauricio a few moments to make himself decent before they bore him away.

  “What am I being accused of?” Mauricio wanted to know.

  “Of high treason,” answered one of the officials.

  Mauricio did not need to be a legal expert to know that it was an offence that would be met with a death sentence.

  104

  Lorena, huddled by the fireplace of the drawing room, shivering under a blanket, was alarmed to hear loud knocks yet again on the front door. It seemed impossible that officials from the Signoria were leading her husband to prison when only a short time before they were lying in bed together, warm in each other’s arms.

  Was her husband really involved in a crime of high treason? Lorena doubted it. Perhaps, made desperate by the financial situation they were in, Mauricio had accepted to participate in a conspiracy in the hope of occupying an important post in the new emerging government. The plague had broken out again in Florence, neither Pisa nor the rest of the cities had been returned, and the crisis was causing many people to go hungry. It was not such an absurd idea, then, that a well-executed coup d’état could bring about a change of government.

  Either way, Lorena could find no signs that pointed to Mauricio as a suspect, and the only thing that really mattered to her was to find the adequate means to get him out of jail, regardless of whether or not he was guilty. But what could she do? Where should she start? More blows from the iron door knocker told her that there was no time to think. As all these questions crowded into her head, Lorena took off her blanket and fearfully went down the stairs leading to the great front door that led into the hall.

  The wind blowing with such fury that night was yet again a harbinger of sorry news. A servant announced that Francesco, her father, had just died. Lorena was speechless for a moment, as if searching for signs on the herald’s face that this was simply not true, but then she broke down into tears. For many weeks now, her father had been bedridden and gravely ill, so his passing away was not unexpected. But in spite of this, the news struck Lorena with the same force with which a lightning bolt is capable of destroying the mightiest of trees. She imagined those final moments of her father’s, holding onto life with the little strength which was left to him, staring into the unfathomable abyss of extinction that awaited him on the other side … He had given her life, educated her, had always been a part of her existence, and now suddenly, he had disappeared forever.

  She was consoled by thinking that as a good Christian he would already be at the gates of heaven. Even so, she was crying uncontrollably and tears were streaming down her face. A profound sadness was oppressing Lorena and she was unable to rid herself of the last image she kept of her father, prostrate on his bed, so thin and emaciated that his features had become unfocused and had lost their characteristic firmness.

  Was it really possible that destiny could take away both her father and her husband on the very same day? Surely God would not permit this and nor would she. Luca was one of the members of the Signoria and therefore his influence was enormous. Just to think that the key to Mauricio’s fate lay in his hands sent a chill down her spine. And yet, a vote from her brother-in-law could be decisive in freeing Mauricio from the shackles that were binding him. She had to use every last ounce of her resources to make Luca feel predisposed in favor of her husband.

  Obviously, she was not the ideal person to convince him. But she knew somebody very well who did have sufficient influence over Luca: her sister Maria, with whom she had broken all ties. Surely, though, a momentous event as the death of a father would be enough to provoke a change in their feelings for each other? Lorena decided to put aside her pride, forget past grievances, and beg and implore as much as was going to be necessary. The first step was to go to her mother’s house, mutually console each other, and then try and explain the dramatic situation in which she found herself. No doubt her mother, with that blend of sensitivity and firmness, which she could administer in such a masterly way, would be just the right mediator.

  105

  Lorena choked back her tears and drew from the deep well of her anguish the miraculous waters that would allow her to keep fighting. Her father’s vigil had to be kept brief because the Signoria had decreed that, in order to fight against the plague, the dead had to be buried within a maximum of twenty-four hours. In spite of this haste, it had been possible to organize a grandiose funeral procession in which fifty torchbearers had lit up her father’s last walk through Florence.

  The emotions Lorena felt during the burial were extremely painful. The truth was that the relationship she had maintained with her father had always been overshadowed with frustration. Irritated by what he considered treachery—her marriage to Mauricio—his judgment of her was always critical. The silences in the face of her successes and the acid comments made about her mistakes were the two ways he usually expressed his rejection of her. She had felt the sensation of not being accepted by her father long before she flowered into womanhood, reaching right back to her first memories as a little girl. Had she perhaps broken all the hopes that her father had pinned on her the very day she was born? Perhaps so, because even when ill and on his deathbed, all Lorena could get from her father was nothing more than a few indifferent looks in answer to her shows of affection.


  It was also probable that he would not have approved Lorena and his widow maintaining a frenetic activity during the funeral rites, sounding out any person who could possibly inform them about Mauricio’s situation. The news was hardly promising. They had detained him under the accusation of conspiring against the republic, although no one seemed to know the details. Rumor had it that Mauricio had been secretly preparing the ground for the return of Piero Medici, son of Il Magnifico, who still dreamed of returning in triumph to Florence. In any case, what was unquestionably true was that he had been locked up in one of the two cells situated high up in the tower of the Signoria Palace, a doubtful privilege reserved for important political prisoners whose most frequent destiny was a rapid death. Maria had promised to intercede with Luca, but Lorena’s heart was filled with black foreboding.

  106

  Once again Mauricio refused to eat when his captors offered him bread and water, afraid that they might poison him. He had good reason to believe this. The fact that he was imprisoned in a cell at the top of the tower of the Signoria was as unexpected as his detention. In fact, the Stinche and Bargello prison buildings housed the gloomy cells where criminals of all classes and conditions were locked up. By contrast, the tower of the Signoria was a maximum security prison reserved for cases of grave and imminent risk to the republic. Could anyone seriously believe that the false accusation leveled at him actually constituted an imminent threat to the city? Obviously the answer was negative, in which case he had to consider another possibility. Whoever had drummed up this accusation against him wielded enough influence to have him incarcerated in the tower of the Government Palace. Mauricio could not dismiss the fact that whoever was implicated in this infamy might be a magistrate from the Signoria, perhaps even Luca himself. If the objective of this trap into which he had fallen was to put an end to him, no trial could be quicker than some deadly poison introduced into his food.

  Mauricio gazed nostalgically at the people wandering around the square below. Would he ever walk freely through the streets of Florence in broad daylight again? He appreciated the somewhat ironic situation in which he found himself. Had his father not been imprisoned as well for a crime he had not committed? And were he to be condemned for high treason, would he not be executed just like him? Would they not confiscate all his belongings in the same way? A few weeks ago when he had visited the Jewish synagogue in the company of Elias and his uncle Jaume, he had concluded that the best way of honoring his dead ancestors consisted in living a faultless life until God decided that his hour had come.

  In moments like this, living faultlessly meant fighting with all his might in order to survive, for Lorena and his children needed him as much as he did them. Mauricio had no false illusions. It was going to be difficult getting out of this situation alive, but if any hope remained, he put it all in Lorena. Perhaps his wife could mobilize enough support out there to demand his freedom. As for him, he would try and live out the role that destiny had assigned him in the best possible way—by putting up a resistance.

  107

  Mauricio woke up parched with thirst in the middle of the night. His dry mouth beseeched him for water and his body yearned for warmth. The cold impregnated every square inch of his humid cell and penetrated his bones pitilessly. His only clothing consisted of a loose, thin wool coat reaching down to his ankles. His jailers had not even bothered to give him a blanket to cover himself or a mattress to lie on. The freezing ground would not have been that uncomfortable, had he at least been able to wrap himself in his cape, but they had taken away all his clothes.

  He did not lament, though. The situation was so serious that he could not allow himself the luxury of fantasizing with anything other than the harsh reality in which he found himself. Complaining about his fate would lead him nowhere. On the contrary, Mauricio knew that he needed every last ounce of energy in order to survive.

  For now, he could still survive without the intake of food or liquids, but in a couple of days he needed to start taking a few sips of water each day or he would die of dehydration. Also, he should remember that it was not only difficult to hide the taste of poison in water, but that there were also many other ways of killing him that were probably far more pleasurable to his enemies. If he were to die in prison without declaring himself guilty, at least his wife would inherit his estate. But if condemned to the gallows, guilty of high treason, all his possessions would be confiscated and Lorena would live in poverty.

  Mauricio smiled to himself as he saw the parchment, quill, and ink his captors had left for him. “If you recognize your crime and denounce Bernardo del Nero, Niccolò Ridolfi, Giannozo Pucci, Lorenzo Tornabuoni, and Giovanni Cambi as your accomplices, the Signoria will look kindly upon you and will only sentence banishment,” a stern-faced guard had assured him. Mauricio had not even bothered to answer him. He was well acquainted with those five eminent Florentines, closely connected to the Medici. It was no secret that the regime instigated by Savonarola was not to the liking of these gentlemen, but it had never come to his ears that they were involved in any conspiracy. He had certainly no intention of using the pen to sign his friends’ death sentence.

  Having proceeded in such an infamous way, he suspected that the first blood to be spilled would be his own. In fact, how much trust could he put in that slimy jailer’s word? None whatsoever. What would stop the Signoria from condemning him as guilty of high treason even if he did sign and seal that document with his own hand? Nothing. Therefore he had no intention of voluntarily signing his own death certificate. However, the parchment and pen could be put to better use. Without stopping to think, Mauricio took the quill in his right hand and, after dipping it in black ink, let the words flow gently from the depths of his soul.

  Through me you pass into the city of woe,

  Through me you pass into eternal pain

  Through me among the people lost for aye.

  These verses were from the third canto of the Inferno from The Divine Comedy, his favorite work of literature since the first time he had read it when he was still a child. Mauricio wondered to himself what secrets lay hidden behind the doors of Hades. He could soon be finding out.

  108

  Savonarola had not allowed feasts or balls during carnival time, but he had prepared a great entertainment as a closing ceremony: nothing less than a gigantic bonfire that would consume in its flames everything that the priest and his followers considered to be vanities and works inspired by the devil. Lorena was of the opinion that satanic influence could not be seen in objects, but in the hearts of ruthless, cruel men like Luca.

  The Signoria had conceded Maria a special dispensation, giving her permission to see her husband on account of the death of her father. Making the most of this, her sister had questioned her closely about the charges being brought against Mauricio. Luca had indicated that although they were extremely serious, he would do what he could to mitigate the sentence. Mitigate the sentence? But surely this meant that there should be a trial in order to determine whether he was guilty or not. Lorena had flared up, strongly criticizing Luca’s attitude in front of her sister. Maria had defended him, alleging that Mauricio’s suspicious activities were the talk of half of Florence: from his criticisms of Savonarola to the warm welcome he had given relatives fleeing from the Spanish Inquisition, the affection he professed toward certain Jewish friends, and finally his well-known friendship with the Medici. Could Luca perhaps be responsible for Mauricio being one of the leaders of a conspiracy plotting to overthrow the government of Savonarola and reinstating Piero de Medici back into power?

  Lorena saw here the confirmation of all the rumors that had been the motive for the detention of her husband, while also losing all hope that Maria could play a part in defending Mauricio. The last words she exchanged with her sister were so hurtful that had her mother not been there they would certainly have come to blows. Afterward, Lorena spent the rest of the day visiting all those people whose contacts might be able to help her husba
nd. By the time the afternoon sun started going down, she was completely exhausted and went to Sofia’s house in search of consolation. There, she shared supper with the family as the evening light lost its daily battle with encroaching darkness. When the meal was over, Sofia offered to accompany her home.

  Talking as they made their way, they came across an extraordinary spectacle in the Piazza della Signoria. A monumental pyre had been erected in the center of the square, surrounded by a wooden rectangle over twenty feet long in which thousands of objects had been amassed, among which could be seen some outstanding works of art. A Venetian collector had offered a fortune to the Signoria to be able to rescue some of these from the flames. They had rejected his proposal in such energetic terms that the Venetian left Florence hurriedly, fearing for his life.

  It was impossible to calculate the amount of objects that were piled up, thought Lorena, as they occupied the whole base of the rectangle and rose to a height of nearly a hundred feet.

  The first layers of the pyramid symbolized a definitive farewell to wicked carnivals: wigs, masks, false beards, disguises, and all the costumes associated with those celebrations awaited silently for their imminent execution. The first levels also contained all those womanly vanities that the monk detested with such a passion: perfumes, creams, curling tongs, tweezers, powder puffs, hand mirrors, and all manner of shiny trinkets. Nor was there any lack of books by Aristophanes, Sophocles, Apuleyo, Ovid, Boccaccio, Poliziano, and other eminent authors whose writings had been judged heretical or dissolute. Scattered over such sublime compositions were also playing cards, dice, tenpins, balls, sheet music, lutes, flutes, liras da braccio … Was the divine will perhaps a colander the devil slipped through as easily as water? That must have been Savonarola’s sad belief, for not only did he think that all known games were a fount of sin, but also any music that did not happen to be sacred. Even paintings and sculpture might be contaminated with Satan’s sulphur. For that reason, on the upper part of the pyre dozens of pictures and sculptures had been placed: Greek gods, heroes of antiquity, nymphs and mythological figures, none of these had found favor in the eyes of Savonarola, either because they represented paganism incarnate or else because they lacked due decorum in their dress.