The Orphan of Florence

by Jeanne Kalogridis

  Out of the corner of my welling eye, I saw Handsome’s lips twist because he knew it was hard for my kind to find food. “Well,” he said, and I realized, with well-concealed joy, that I would eventually be sleeping at home that night. “All right,” he said to the old man, who smiled. “But I will call on you in the morning, and the boy had better be safe and well fed.”

  “You’re a man of compassion, Officer,” the old man said. “You shan’t regret it.”

  “Thank you, Officer,” I said. “It’s true, you won’t regret it. I swear by the Virgin’s blue.”

  “Hmmph,” Officer Handsome said, his tone one of irritated dismissal. “Ser Giovanni, I’ll call on you in the morning.”

  Pleased, Ser Giovanni gave a slight bow and caught my elbow with a politely firm grip. I let him lead me out of the alleyway to the street, in the direction of the Via de’ Calzaiuoli, on which stood Florence’s famous cathedral, the Duomo. So long as the policeman was within earshot, I remained compliant and silently focused on how to snatch the gold-handled cane without getting beaten with it.

  We were finally out of Officer Handsome’s earshot, almost off the side road and onto the broad Via de’ Calzaiuoli, which bisected the city from north to south. I was just getting ready to stick my foot out to trip the old man so I could snatch the cane and run. But in the breath between my decision and its execution, Ser Giovanni came to a sudden stop.

  Before I could blink, he dropped my arm and pulled on the gold handle of his cane. A wicked-looking stiletto came hissing out as the wooden part of the cane clattered to the cobblestones. The dagger was double-edged, narrower than a finger but as long as my arm from elbow to fingertips. Long enough to pass right through me with room to spare.

  I tried to run, but he caught hold of me again, grasping my cloak and tunic at the neck. And then he lifted me off my feet with one hand and shoved me against the front wall of an armorer’s shop. The exquisitely fine tip of the stiletto—sharper than my razor—rested against my bare cheek.

  We were nose to nose. Struggling for breath as my collar tightened around my neck, I saw the deep lines etched on either side of his thin lips, and the finer, feathery ones about his one exposed eye, which had pronounced bags beneath it. But his eyebrow and the stubble on his chin and hollow cheeks were mostly black. He was past middle age, old enough to be my grandfather, but definitely not weakened by age. Nor was he, I realized, a banker.

  Officer Handsome and I had been thoroughly duped. I whispered my favorite curse word, the one about what should be done to someone else’s mother.

  “I could cut you so fast, you’d be shaking hands with the devil before you knew you were dead,” he hissed in my ear, his breath warm and therefore welcome, his words not. “So before you think of running off or causing any trouble, think on this.” And he whipped the stiletto through the air just outside my ear. I squeezed my eyes shut and flinched as it whistled.

  Abruptly, he let go of my cloak. I landed clumsily on my feet, too terrified to think, and opened my eyes to discover him giving me a look, one that said he was an emperor—no, more imperious than even that. One that said he was God, and held the power of life and death. I tried to look away from that gaze and found I couldn’t.

  “Pick up the cane,” he ordered, aiming the point of the stiletto at my throat.

  I slowly picked up the cane. He held out his free hand, and I gave it to him, my eyes wide, my lips smaller than they’ve ever been. They weren’t the only things puckered.

  “I won’t run,” I said weakly, as he slid the empty cane into a sheath hidden beneath his cloak.

  “Now,” he commanded, “walk closely beside me. If you decide to run … Well, as you’ve seen, I can move faster than you can.”

  He took my upper arm firmly, but not so hard that anyone would notice anything amiss. They’d think we were a couple coming from the Buco Tavern. Which, after all, we were.

  I oriented my body toward the northeast, where the Via de’ Gori and his supposed banker’s palazzo lay. But he steered me the opposite way around—to the southeast, and the Old Bridge, the Ponte Vecchio, over the Arno River.

  Toward a whole new world of trouble.

  Two

  I’m not a superstitious sort, but shortly after leaving the orphanage, I discovered the Magician’s talisman really worked. The first summer Tommaso and I were together, the worst sort of plague was making its fatal rounds in the poorer neighborhoods. Our neighborhood, in fact, and Tommaso caught it. He was only four, an innocent clinging little thing, and I felt helpless watching him suffer, coughing up his own blood, flailing in delirium as he fought for each breath.

  It wasn’t that I really cared about the boy, mind you. (At least, that’s what I told myself to stay sane.) It’s just that I would never have been able to find another accomplice who trusted me, whom I could trust, and who did everything I told him to.

  I’d learned early on that God never answered prayers—at least not mine. I figured my prayers might even kill the boy. So when Tommaso just kept getting sicker, I slipped the silver talisman around his neck.

  His fever broke within the hour.

  When he came to, he discovered the talisman and asked, Why am I wearing your lucky charm, Giuliano?

  He always called me Giuliano because I told him that was my name. No point in telling him it was actually the feminine Giuliana, because I didn’t want him slipping up and using it on the street. That would cause real trouble, and the police would haul me off even if I hadn’t been doing anything nefarious at the time. A young woman unescorted on the street was either a servant or a whore, and I was too rough-looking to be mistaken for someone’s servant.

  I gave it to you because I got tired of it, I answered Tommaso.

  He wouldn’t drop the subject. But, it’s supposed to keep you safe. It’s magic.

  There’s no such thing as magic, I’d said wearily. Even though by that point, I had no doubt it had saved Tommaso’s life. I just hated admitting I was superstitious.

  He silently digested this, long enough for me—who’d been sitting up with him for two nights—to doze off as I sat cross-legged on the floor beside our straw mattress.

  You love me, he said, startling me awake. I blinked at him, too disoriented to speak. He looked at me with his huge pale eyes, then back at the coin in his small hand. I felt a sudden welling of tears and became angry with myself for growing soft until I remembered that exhaustion made people weepy for no good reason.

  You gave this to me to get me well, he said thoughtfully. And it worked. But you could’ve gotten sick yourself. You love me, Guiliano, even if you won’t say it.

  I made a disgusted face and said, You’re delirious. Go back to sleep. And promptly fell asleep myself.

  I made Tommaso keep wearing the talisman. Once he was better and we were getting ready to go play the Game one evening, he tried to give it back.

  I don’t want it, I said. You keep it.

  He looked up at me with his cherub face. You do love me, Giuliano. Even if you won’t say it. You used to wear the charm to keep you safe during the Game. But now you’ve given it to me.

  I curled my lip. I gave it to you, you little shite, because you’re likelier to screw up and get caught. I can take care of myself. You can’t.

  I love you, he said, and grabbed me so tightly I could barely breathe. He was hopeless, really; all my passionate warnings to guard his heart had no effect on him. And that was sad, because in this life, loss and abandonment are guaranteed.

  Several times during the two years that had passed since, food and money grew scarce and I had plenty of opportunities to sell the talisman. I’d planned to do it right after Tommaso and I got together. The proceeds would have made us very comfortable for a few months, I reasoned, but its loss might cost me a partner. Loyal, honest partners—and there were none so pathetically loyal and honest as Tommaso—were nearly impossible to come by. In the long run, it made more sense to keep him safe and well.
/>   It had nothing to do with adoring him. Nothing at all.

  * * *

  So there I was with my abductor gripping my arm as I cursed myself for letting Tommaso wear the talisman. The further south we headed through the city, the faster his pace grew. He was in a hurry to get where we were going and clearly didn’t want to be seen.

  I’m fast on my feet, but I had to work to keep up with him as we made our way into an alleyway, dodging stray dogs and cats, stones and garbage, and the occasional drunk staggering toward home. My man knew his way and didn’t slow once, as if it’d been full daylight and he’d memorized every rat and pebble.

  Soon we were crossing onto the narrow Old Bridge, so crowded with run-down shops that you couldn’t see the Arno River beneath it. Even in the cold, I had to cover my nose with my free hand at the smell coming from the tanners’ establishments, where they use piss and dung to treat the rotting skins. It can make your eyes water. And then there are the butchers’ shops, with the blood and offal from carcasses; I don’t need to tell you how bad that smells. They’re all on the river because it’s easier to dump all the nasty stuff in there. Ser Giovanni ducked his head against the stench and increased his speed.

  We arrived panting on the other side of the river, in the southern quarter known as the Oltrarno, a less populated place than the city proper. The houses were fewer and not so crowded together, and the streets broader, marked by the occasional walled estate of a wealthy merchant, a few smaller churches, and shops. My abductor had a nose for alleyways, and we soon found ourselves in an empty one between two houses so close to each other that I could easily have pressed a palm to both buildings at the same time. The narrow space was muddy and even the bitter weather failed to lessen the stink of recently emptied chamber pots.

  Ser Giovanni set a huge paw on my chest and thrust me against an icy wall, then seized my collar so tightly I struggled to catch my breath. He stared down into my face; flickering yellow light from an upstairs window lit him ghoulishly from above, so that his face was in shadow. The silk patch covering his right eye added to the sinister effect.

  “The paper,” he said. He took it from his pocket with his free hand and waved it in front of my nose. “Who gave it to you? And who were you delivering it to?”

  “No one gave it to me,” I said, bristling faintly, a bit irritated, despite my terror, that he would assume I was too ignorant to have written it myself. It was a perfectly reasonable assumption, but it annoyed me anyway. “I wrote something down so I wouldn’t forget it. It’s just an address.”

  He let go a laugh that was more a bark. “Please. For a pickpocket, you’re a very stupid liar. It’s written in code. You’re working for spies.”

  “If you’re so honest, why did you lie about it to the police?”

  He glared at me, unmoved; the heat of his one-eyed gaze was so intense that I yielded.

  “No one gave it to me,” I said emphatically. “It’s a note to myself.”

  See, I’d created a secret alphabet when I lived at the orphanage, to keep the nuns from deciphering my message to a certain lad in the building adjacent to the girls’ dormitory. It was simple, really; I’d taken some symbols—squares, squiggles, punctuation marks, the few Greek letters that I knew—and changed their design a bit to create something new. And then I substituted a symbol for a particular letter of the alphabet. A, for example, was represented by a star, b by a backward 5, and so on.

  “In code?” he hissed. I could hear him slip his hand into his pocket. He was reaching for the stiletto. “Where did you get this? Tell me now.”

  He truly seemed ready to murder me; I caved. “It’s my fence’s address,” I said. “It’s my little alphabet, so people can’t read what I don’t want them to.”

  “Prove it,” he said. “Write it down and decipher it for me.”

  “I have no pen,” I said.

  He pointed down at the mud beneath our feet.

  I had no choice. I knelt on the cold stinking ground, slipped off a glove, and after a panicked moment when I had trouble remembering the fence’s new address, I scribed my secret symbols in the wet earth.

  I glanced up expecting to find him impressed by my penmanship, but his expression was unreadable. I wiped my filthy finger on my cloak and began to rise.

  “Not yet,” he said. “Now write the decryption beneath it.”

  “The de— what?”

  “Write down what it really says.”

  I hesitated; if I gave him my fence’s location, then he could easily turn both of us over to the police. And my fence would see to it that I didn’t survive a day in jail with him.

  But looking up at Ser Giovanni—if that was indeed his name—I got the impression that he was planning an even worse fate for me if I didn’t comply.

  I wrote the address down, putting each letter beneath the symbol that represented it, and, still on my knees, looked up at his face again.

  It was motionless and totally devoid of emotion save for a slight widening of the eyes, which were no longer staring at me, but something oddly distant.

  He returned to himself and gestured for me to rise; I ran the sole of my boot over the mud first, smearing it until my secret disappeared. Without a word, he gripped my elbow and pulled me along at a breakneck pace, leading me away from the populated area and out toward the countryside. We took a little dirt path through a sparsely wooded field, with winter-browned grass and shrubs and the clawing fingers of oaks that snagged on my cap. The ground was uneven, thanks to stones and the work of moles in warmer days, before they burrowed deeper beneath the surface. I turned my ankle stepping into a hole, but my captor didn’t let me slow; fortunately, the pain lessened the farther we walked. Soon we came to a clearing. On the near horizon stood the outskirts of a heavy forest.

  I feared we were headed there, where he would ravish and murder me, but instead he veered to the right until we came to a rusticated stone wall, a good head taller than he and covered in tangles of winter-naked woody vines. The wall seemed to stretch on forever, and we walked along its forbidding periphery until Ser Giovanni finally came to a stop.

  I felt the ugly thrill of an animal before the slaughter and girded myself to break away. Just as I began to turn away, Giovanni dropped my arm, drew the stiletto, and placed its tip at my throat, just firmly enough to make an impression on my skin. If I ran in any direction except directly backward—not the fastest way to escape—I’d cut myself on it.

  “Don’t move,” he growled, and I, a pickpocket born to disappear in a wink, found myself frozen, breathless.

  With his gaze hard on me, he used his free hand to dig beneath the neck of his tunic and slip out a very long leather thong that hung from his neck. The thong held several skeleton keys, which jingled as he felt beneath the tangle of vines. Without looking away from me, he picked one of the keys from the thong and slipped it into a hole hidden deep within the rock. I could hear the muffled click as the lock turned. He gave a mighty one-armed shove against the stone, and it groaned slowly open like a door. In fact, it was a door, a heavy wooden one, cleverly covered in a thin layer of stone and vines to match the wall. I expected to see light coming from a house, but what lay inside the wall was as dark as what lay outside.

  At the very moment Ser Giovanni pushed the door open wide enough for us to pass, his attention was compromised when he leaned inward a bit, and the tip of the stiletto leaned with him half a hand’s span away from my throat.

  I took a long awkward step backward, pivoted, and began to run. I had no intention of waiting to see what the bastard had planned for me, here in the middle of nowhere, in the dark.

  He barked a curse behind me, but I didn’t look back. I ran full tilt, the cold air stinging my lungs, my gait like a reeling drunk’s thanks to the moles. My gaze was fastened on the weed- and vine-covered ground just in front of me, eerily lit by the moon’s blue light as it floated above the Arno.

  I got several paces ahead of him and might have gotten
away, but the toe of my boot found the edge of a large rock and I was taken down, arms spread-eagle. My knees took the brunt of the fall, a sharp stone slicing into one. I didn’t pause to take inventory but scrambled back to my feet and ran, gritting my teeth every time I put weight on the injured knee. I managed several painful, hitching strides over the uneven terrain, knowing that my pace was too slow. I stared up at the moon, thinking that I looked on it for the last time. As scared as I was, I was also angry. It wasn’t fair, my living such a short, miserable, loveless life, and now I was on my way to spend eternity in hell.

  I propelled myself forward on my good leg just as a leather-gloved hand caught my elbow with crushing force and yanked me off balance. I flailed, struggling to stay on my feet, but in the end, even my captor couldn’t hold me up. I fell backward, landing hard on my arse, shrieking at the realization that my dignity and my life were about to be taken here, in this desolate stretch of thatch and rocks and mole holes.

  “For God’s sake,” Ser Giovanni said, with matter-of-fact disgust. “Keep your mouth shut. No one will hear you if you don’t, but it’s damned irritating. You’re shrill as a little girl.”

  He dragged me limping back over the uneven ground, through the open secret door and onto an estate, with a square three-story palazzo as big as a Medici’s sitting in the middle of a sprawling compound. The building was relatively new and in good repair, but not a single light shone through any of the windows. The fountain—several tiered marble bowls that grew gradually larger from top to bottom, each decorated with a fleur de lis, the stylized lily that represented Florence—had been dry for some time. The entire landscape was as wild and tangled as the weedy, hole-pocked field outside the walls.

  My captor pushed the door shut, the stiletto in his hand, his one eye on me, and slid a bolt, locking it to those outside. He then took another of the keys on the thong and turned it in a crevice somewhere in the rock. Locking me in.

  “Come on,” he said quietly, lowering the stiletto to his side, and took my arm again. Now that I was safely his, his grip was polite but steadying, his pace slow.