by Alana White
“It's always about our necks, isn't it?” Guid'Antonio said, his words dying into silence in the vast room.
And so, amid the light of many candles, the men parted, gathering their cloaks, many of them with thoughts blurred, not altogether unsuspicious of Lorenzo's true motives. At the door Lorenzo said, “Guid'Antonio, a moment alone, per favore?”
Guid'Antonio closed his eyes, seeking a small bit of rest, before opening them again. “Certainly.”
“You know all this will come down to numbers and influence. That is, if we get it going in the first place.”
“It almost always does. Come down to numbers and influence, I mean. Are you worried? People listen to you,” Guid'Antonio said.
Lorenzo laughed. “Not so much anymore, as you just witnessed. Whereas everyone values your good opinion and takes note when you withhold it.”
“Still?”
Lorenzo smiled and touched him lightly on the shoulder. “You know they do.”
Sharply aware his was the solitary shadow on the wall, Guid'Antonio walked through the loggia arcade in the light of dimly burning torches, his mind bounding over the events of the last four long days, to Ognissanti Church, to the weeping Virgin, and back again to Lorenzo. Lorenzo vulnerable, Lorenzo declaring in the privacy of his studiolo his firm belief the Medici party must strengthen itself or face the city's ruin along with the ruin of all their families. Lorenzo “hanged” in effigy, his palace smeared with blood, and now Lorenzo urging the men within the inner circle to consider tampering with the constitution of the Florentine Republic. Guid'Antonio breathed deeply, liking neither the direction of his thoughts nor the shrinking feeling they occasioned in the pit of his belly.
Just beyond the main gate, two guards stood watch, assigned by Palla Palmieri to their new post earlier today. Guid'Antonio passed the armed men, slowing at the figure of Lorenzo's uncle, Tommaso Soderini, seated on the stone bench facing Via Larga, his head resting against the front wall of Lorenzo's palazzo. Nighttime shadows furrowed the length of Tommaso's crimson robe. He said, “What took you so long?”
Guid'Antonio sat beside him. The street was quiet, shop doors and shutters locked, the night air warm but pleasant. At this hour, San Lorenzo market just around the corner was closed down.
“I spoke briefly with Bartolomeo to say Maddalena is in my prayers and to ask if she needs anything,” Guid'Antonio said.
“I didn't see him.”
“He left by the garden gate.”
“And does she? Need anything?”
“Prayers, only. His daughter Alessandra and her four sisters are in close attendance.”
Tommaso nodded, smiling. “Five daughters. Remarkable.”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember when Cosimo de' Medici built this palace?”
“Tommaso, I was only eight or so when Lorenzo's grandfather started construction here.”
“It must be your hair, all that silver you're sporting now. Also, it seems as if you've always been around. Like a not altogether unpleasant odor lingering in the air.”
“Thank you,” Guid'Antonio said. “I think.”
“Cosimo commissioned Brunelleschi for a design,” Tommaso said. “ ‘Too grand!’ Cosimo believed, so he hired Michelozzo, instead. This, after Brunelleschi already had built the Cathedral's magnificent brick dome. And after Cosimo had hired him to rebuild San Lorenzo. Cosimo knew the danger of flying too high. The old man said so many times. And yet, he devoted much of his life not only to books and learning, but to fine craftsmanship, as well. I was among the first to stroll through the loggia arcade there at our backs. To gasp at Donatello's little David, perched on a pedestal in the garden in all his naked glory. In those days, people considered that delicious sculpture pagan.”
“They still do,” Guid'Antonio said.
Tommaso chuckled. “No one had seen anything like it since the Greeks and Romans. Which was precisely the point. Ironic, isn't it, that Cosimo had it done for this palace as a symbol of Florentine liberty, as David conquered Goliath, so Florence conquered blah, blah, blah.”
Guid'Antonio relaxed with his hands in his lap, content to let the old man reminisce. He had heard enough stories about Cosimo de' Medici from his elders to fill a book. Several books. Upon Cosimo's death, the Florentine government had named him the Father of His Country, and him, yes . . . a private citizen.
“Alas, Lorenzo's father, Piero, lacked the physical energy to match Cosimo's fervor when it came to rebuilding Florence,” Tommaso said. “But even Piero understood the political importance of maintaining the status quo. Tamper with it, and you're risking your neck. Your family. You have a son named Giovanni, Guid'Antonio?”
“I do, yes.”
“Is he a good boy? Will he follow in his father's footsteps?”
“I don't know yet,” Guid'Antonio said, tucking away the implied compliment.
The old man puffed out a breath of air. “You had best find out.” He coughed, a terrible hack, causing the guards to stir and glance in their direction.
Alarmed, Guid'Antonio turned to the old man. “I'm fine,” Tommaso said. Coughing had weakened his voice. “We're bound by time and loyalties, my friend. You, our magnificent Lorenzo, and me. We may not always agree with one another—” He managed a laugh. “But we remain within his golden circle. Do you know why?” The little laugh gave way to another series of rasping coughs.
“Why?” Guid'Antonio asked.
Tommaso's pale blue eyes opened wide on him. “Because you and I are the only ones who dare tell him it's raining when he says the sun is shining. We tell him the truth. And he loves us for it. That's why he wants your approval in all things, my friend. For validation and to ease his conscience in the days ahead.”
Tommaso stood, drawing his cloak close about his shoulders. Bird wings. “I'm almost eighty years old. My nephew has nothing to fear from me. Weeping paintings to turn the populace against him? Hanging him in effigy?” Tommaso's mouth crimped in a smile. “Not me.” He raised his brow. “Not anymore.”
In silence, with Guid'Antonio acting as escort, they walked through wide dark streets to Ponte Trinita and then alongside the river to the next bridge, Ponte alla Carraia. Across this bridge lay Tommaso's palace in the Green Dragon district of the Santo Spirito quarter. Beyond the river, torches flickered here and there, chasing shadows from the dark piazzas and deserted streets.
Guid'Antonio let Florence's premier elected official walk unescorted across the bridge spanning the Arno's warm, dark water, but kept an eye on Tommaso's slight figure as he approached the Soderini Palace gate. Satisfied the old man was safe, Guid'Antonio turned from Ognissanti and walked in the direction from which they had just come, setting a course now for Santa Croce and the Del Vigna household.
There, through the iron gates, he had a clear view of Maria's moonlit garden. The house was dark and silent. At this hour, she slept, Maria, his sometimes lover, his wife. Here was a woman who gave her mother brave comfort; surely in good time he, too, would benefit from her devotion. Shaken somehow, and not at all certain why he had made this discomforting, nocturnal visit, Guid'Antonio withdrew and trod back toward his home in Ognissanti.
TWENTY-ONE
“Giorno.” Strolling into the kitchen at noon the following day, dressed in traveling clothes, Guid'Antonio squeezed Amerigo's shoulder, kissed Domenica on both cheeks and gave Cesare, whom he had seen in his apartment a short while earlier, a nod of acknowledgment. Olimpia Pasquale looked up from the stone sink, smiling, swishing basil in a basin of water to clean it.
“Giorno,” Domenica said. “Praise God for a miracle, you're happy again!” She crossed herself. “Olimpia, for God's precious love, don't crush the leaves.”
“What difference does it make?” Olimpia said back. “We're only going to pulverize them.”
“My happiness is so rare it bears commenting on?” Guid'Antonio said, smiling. The kitchen smelled deliciously of basil and garlic, pine nuts, and Parmesan cheese.
>
“This week, yes,” Cesare said, stepping quickly from the sink to the cold hearth in a move calculated to hide the bulky object looming beside the fire irons.
Guid'Antonio narrowed his eyes, watching his willowy—and wily?—manservant.
“All the more remarkable when one considers there's no rest for Medici men,” Amerigo said.
“Does the entire town know about the meeting at Lorenzo's house last night? And the vandalism that occasioned it?”
They stared at him wonderingly, as if he had just asked whether they knew there was a river running through town called the Arno. “Word of the attack on Lorenzo and the subsequent meeting swept Florence like wildfire,” Cesare said.
Attack. “And?” Guid'Antonio said.
“The popolo minuto wonder, ‘What next?’ as they always do when there's a nocturnal meeting at Palazzo Medici. They're calling Lorenzo's hanging an act committed by Satan to claim Lorenzo as his own. They're saying they wish they had done it themselves, rather than leave it to the Prince of Darkness.”
Domenica snapped her damp wiping towel at her son. “Cesare, if there's a prince of darkness in Florence, it's you! I should box your ears for repeating malicious gossip.”
“If you do, watch the earring, Mama, it's new from Verrocchio's.” Cesare danced away from his mother's wrath, grinning impishly.
“Domenica,” Guid'Antonio started, but hesitated as the object behind Cesare shook itself vigorously and rose up from the fireplace. “God's flesh. What is that?”
A touch of uncertainty crossed Cesare's face. And then he stepped aside to reveal a huge, hunch-shouldered, hairy beast: it was the mastiff dead at the hand of Bartolomeo Scala's secretary. Guid'Antonio's mouth dropped open. Miraculously, it appeared that in the past week the animal had gained weight; very little, of course, but in any event, the dog's ribs no longer seemed about to poke holes through his skin. Cesare had hidden him away. He had bathed and brushed the animal, too. For all his scars and beatings, the cane corso Italiano looked amazingly well. And what of the cur Alessandro Braccesi had killed at Lorenzo's palace gate? Well. Florence had a multitude of stray, starving dogs.
The grinning animal dared take a shaky step toward him. Guid'Antonio raised a hand: “Stop.” Amazingly, the dog obeyed. Guid'Antonio stifled a smile.
“Tell him to sit,” Cesare said.
Guid'Antonio did, and again the animal obeyed. Amazing. Guid'Antonio stared hard at Cesare. “This explains the bits of leftover roast you squirreled away the other evening. Not to mention Elisabetta's missing charity blanket.”
Cesare met his eyes straight on. “It certainly does.”
“And you were out yesterday morning in the rain.”
“Walking him,” Amerigo said. “I saw them together.”
“And covered for them, too,” Guid'Antonio said.
Domenica poured pine nuts into a mortar bowl and ground them with the pestle, her expression grim. “I warned Cesare the lady Elisabetta Vespucci would skin him like a rabbit meant for the pot, should she find out. Worse, she would have him tossed in the Stinche.”
Cesare lifted his chin. “I believe she would be overruled.” His eyes sought Guid'Antonio.
“No one's being tossed in the Stinche,” Guid'Antonio said.
“Except, of course, our kinsman, Piero Vespucci,” Amerigo kicked in.
“Amerigo, must you always—” Guid'Antonio stopped and drew a deep breath. “So you think your mother doesn't know about—” He indicated the cane corso Italiano. “This?”
“Actually, my mother does know,” Amerigo said. “Somehow, she, ummm, gained the impression he has your permission to stay. Nor is she happy about it, either.”
“His fur makes her sneeze,” Cesare said.
The rare smile breezed along Guid'Antonio's lips. “Welcome, you,” he said to the dog. “No! Stay away from me. Cesare, you're the one feeding him. Why is he making calf eyes at me?”
“You fed him in Mercato Nuovo,” Amerigo said.
“I spit some spoilt cheese on the ground.”
“Yes.”
Cesare turned up both palms in a gesture of helplessness. “He loves you unconditionally.”
A dog. “Get him out of here,” Guid'Antonio said. “Dogs don't belong in the kitchen with the—” He glanced at the table. “The pesto.”
“Amen,” Domenica said. “Olimpia! You've spilled the olive oil again! My God, girl!”
“You'd be wise to burn the blanket,” Guid'Antonio told Cesare. “No need in providing Elisabetta fuel for her anger.”
“I'm grieved my mother is such a bone of contention,” Amerigo said. Glancing at the dog, he grinned. “No pun intended.”
“Never fear, there wasn't one,” Guid'Antonio said.
The dog straggled after Cesare, glancing back over his hefty shoulder at Guid'Antonio, his dog-smile open and adoring. “Amerigo,” Guid'Antonio said, “let's get going. Do we have food for our trip?”
Amerigo drew himself up in his boots and brown leather pants. “I wrapped cold roast pork in greased paper and packed my saddlebags hours ago. Before Cesare informed me we weren't leaving for Morba at the crack of dawn today, as planned. Although he didn't say why you changed our time of departure.”
“I was with Maria,” Guid'Antonio said. Thank God he had gone back to see her this morning, after leaving her gate without venturing inside the house last night.
Olimpia grinned and Domenica glanced up from the mortar bowl. “Ah, que bella Maria,” she said.
“That explains your smile,” Amerigo said. “And this delay.”
“How's her mother?” Domenica asked.
Alessandra del Vigna was as dead now as if she had already drawn her last breath. In fact, she might already have done. “The lady is grave,” Guid'Antonio said.
But nothing, not even the memory of Maria's mother in pain upon her daybed, could spoil his joy at having spent a few hours with Maria earlier today. Hours he had stolen when, upon jerking awake at dawn, he had felt the emptiness in his soul and realized how hungry he was to see his family. Ridiculous, unconscionable: he had been in Florence almost five days and spent no time to speak of with them, damn the extenuating circumstances.
Dressing quickly, he had retraced his steps of the previous night and gone to Santa Croce to fetch her and the boy. Strolling together from the Del Vigna courtyard, his little family had struck out across the piazza, stepping lightly into the sun-gilded square, where this morning there was no sign of a ghostly Giuliano de' Medici celebrating his snow-bound tournament. Maria lifted her face to the sun, soaking up its warm, healing rays. She was as much a prisoner in the twilight sadness of her mother's house as Guid'Antonio's kinsman, Piero Vespucci, was in the dark night of the Stinche.
Watching Maria, Guid'Antonio saw a woman in her middle twenties, with thick dark lashes brushing her cheeks and black tendrils of hair escaping the cowl meant to cover her head and neck from the roving eyes of the public. Love thickened his throat, and he was grateful to God he had delayed his journey to Morba until later in the day.
In no hurry, they walked amongst vendors and dodged boys playing ball, Guid'Antonio's spirits so elevated, he hardly noticed the ramshackle appearance of the poor wooden houses and shops encircling Piazza Santa Croce. From two venditrici, women peddling their wares outside the guild-endorsed shops, he purchased a packet of sewing needles and a lace cap for Maria. Giovanni's gift was a marionette dangling from a web of strings.
“See, Giovanni.” Laughing, Guid'Antonio made the wooden spider's legs clack and dance in the street.
The boy stared, amazed: not at the toy, but at his father. “Mama,” Giovanni said. “He does so know how to laugh!”
Heat stung Guid'Antonio's cheeks; his smile faded.
“Giovanni! Of course he does.” Embarrassed, Maria placed her hands on Giovanni's shoulders; leaning down, she kissed the boy's cheek. “Why don't you try working the puppet?”
To Guid'Antonio, his wife sounded nervous an
d exhausted, too tired to tolerate much more conflict and weight. He touched her arm. “It's all right, Maria.”
“No. But one day—” She let the sentence drift. One day, my mother—my constant presence won't be required at my mother's house.
Giovanni squinted up at Guid'Antonio. “May I play with the spider puppet?”
“Of course. It's yours. Try not to get it tangled.”
But Giovanni was already concentrating on the puppet and the relationship of the strings to his childish fingers. His parents took the opportunity to sit together on the stone bench encircling the fountain, where the morning sun poured down on them, and the water in the fountain gurgled and glistened, spur ting from the mouth of a reclining stone lion. “Guid'Antonio, such a thing for 'Vanni to say.”
“Well. If it's the truth.”
“But it isn't.” She placed her hand high on his thigh, and he felt a spasm of desire shoot through his groin, here in crowded Piazza Santa Croce with russet buildings thrusting skyward all around them, and Santa Croce Church watching from the piazza's far end.
A band of adolescent boys strolled past. One grabbed his crotch. “Que bella Signora, best you should try this long ripe fruit!”
Stone-faced, Guid'Antonio eased his dagger from its sheath. The brazen boys hurried on, but they were not so threatened that they desisted from flashing wicked grins over their shoulders at Maria.
“Bold,” she fussed. “Traveling in packs, wearing one another's colors with knives at their hips. Blessed Mother, if ever I hear of Giovanni strutting about like that.”
“You won't,” he assured her. “Hear of it, I mean.”
A little frown creased her brow; she caught his smile, and grinned. “You're teasing me.”
“Yes.”
With a show of delicacy, Maria removed her hand from his leg. “Cara, over here,” she called to Giovanni. “Don't wander into the alley.”
Dutifully, the boy moved away from the shadowy backstreet, toward his parents. At that same moment, bell towers and churches all over Florence pealed the hour, high and bright, shivering through the air. It was almost noon.
