The Orphan of Florence

by Jeanne Kalogridis

  I fetched my cloak from the outer room, then rummaged about the kitchen and found the freshly sharpened carving knife I’d used on the roast capon the night before. I had no baldric in which to sheathe it, but I wrapped the blade in some rags and fixed it so the metal handle was upright in my cloak pocket.

  There was no time to bind my breasts or worry with stuffing my leggings so I looked male. My mantle alone would have to serve to hide my femininity.

  I bent down and petted Leo’s soft furrowed head. “I’ll be back soon,” I promised, though the dog looked less than reassured. “We’ll both be back.”

  * * *

  The doors to the house were easily unlocked. I hurried out into the night and felt a chill mist settle on my face. The moon had set and a heavy fog made it impossible for me to see beyond my next two steps. Even so, I made unerring haste to the gate in the first stone wall. It was unlocked, but somehow blocked. I put a shoulder to it and strained against it with all my weight. It wouldn’t budge.

  I cursed and grabbed the tangle of thick woody vines. They were strong enough so that I could have pulled myself up, but the soles of my boots slipped off the damp stone and I fell back to earth. The gracelessness caused by the poppy wasn’t the only problem; my arms simply weren’t strong enough. I needed the strength of my legs to boost me over.

  The cold air stinging my face, I turned about thinking to find some stones to pile up, but with the fog limiting my vision, I would have had to slowly wander the grounds. There wasn’t time.

  And then I remembered the stools in the kitchen. I ran back and dragged one out to the wall. My plan: to get to the top of the wall, then reach down and retrieve the stool so that I could use it to get over the second wall. The plan worked only partially. The final push with my legs that boosted me to the top knocked the stool over, and I slipped, right over the edge onto the other side.

  I landed hard on my back, the air knocked from my lungs. As soon as I could draw a breath, I exhaled a whispery laugh. I’d fallen onto the bed of the cart that Ser Abramo had used to block the gate. It solved the problem of getting over the second wall, but the wagon was damnably heavy and difficult to maneuver. I spent too much time pushing, pulling, and cursing while the fog lightened from charcoal to dove gray.

  Dawn was coming. Too soon, the Magician would be drawing his dagger, risking his neck. I pushed with more force than I was able, until I felt my howling sinews tear, and then I pushed harder. Dangerous minutes passed. By the time I had the wagon aligned with the second wall and hurled myself to freedom, the trees in the forest were no longer black silhouettes, but objects painted in varying shades of gray in the colorless hour before dawn.

  The minute my feet found earth, I went flying through the countryside in search of the Magician, with the same desperate speed I’d once used to flee him.

  Ten

  My feet finally hit city cobblestone a quarter-hour walk from my rendezvous point with Niccolo. I’d never run so fast—faster than I’d ever run from the police or an angry mark—down side streets, through alleys, using every shortcut I knew to get to the Ponte Vecchio. I hurled myself half blind into the fog, able to see only a stride ahead but never slowing, swathed in brume that muted outer sounds but magnified the drum of my every step, the gasp of each breath.

  The Magician was stronger, faster, more experienced with a sword than I could ever hope to be. He’d trained Niccolo in the art of the dagger and could work better with him than I could. Except that he didn’t understand that I was cursed: everyone I’d cared about had abandoned me or died. Which meant something was going to go wrong.

  I finally turned right onto the Borgo di San Iacopo, the broad boulevard running alongside the River Arno, blocked from my view by waist-high walls built up along the steep embankment. Niccolo and I were to “fight” near the archway spanning the entrance to the bridge, where the Borgo intersected with the ancient Via Romana, the Oltrarno’s main thoroughfare. The fog should have been thicker near the water, but the lack of houses on the embankment had allowed the rays of the rising sun behind me to penetrate the street and reduce the thick brume to a light, swirling mist; the feel of the sun on my back spurred me on. I could see farther, but the dawn’s colors were still paled and the edges of the visible world as indistinct as a dream. On the other side of the river, feathery streaks of fog drifted downward, thinning to expose a sea of slightly peaked orange-red roofs atop pale stone: Florence proper, her buildings dwarfed by the massive orange dome of the city cathedral and the gray slender tower atop the government fortress called the Palace of Lords, the Palazzo della Signoria.

  A block from my destination, the orange roofs of twin square watchtowers appeared out of the silent white fog, positioned on opposite sides of the archway over the entrance to the Old Bridge. The windows of the western watchtower were dark, but those of the eastern—the one under which the play would unfold—were lit. In the near distance, a dark huddle of monks ambled ahead of me.

  I slowed to a rapid walk and raised my cowl, hanging close to the southern side of the street opposite the riverbank and watchtower. The smell of rising yeast and the yellow glow from every window meant the city was coming to life. At any second, the boulevard would begin to fill. I wanted to attract no attention, and if I was too late, I didn’t want to endanger Ser Abramo with a distraction. And if I wasn’t …

  Several close-pressed buildings away from the watchtower, I stopped, squinting through remnants of the lifting mist looking for both men. They would be cloaked, of course, but I knew their builds, their movements.

  No one lingered near the bridge’s gate. I stood motionless for at least a full minute scanning the area, feeling the cold sweat run down my back and chest, and began to shiver.

  The sun had definitely risen; the mist was burning off rapidly. No sign of either man.

  I inched closer to the gate, looking at everything about me, hanging close to the buildings opposite, until I had a clear view of the appointed place, until I was close enough to intercept Niccolo the instant he appeared. A donkey and cart on the Via Romana rattled onto the Ponte Vecchio. A brown flock of Franciscan monks moved past me and turned to the right, away from the bridge, onto the even broader Via Romana.

  I waited another full minute, glancing behind me at the Borgo di San Iacopo, to my left at the entrance to the bridge, to my right at a few sleepy pedestrians ambling down the Via Romana. But I saw no Niccolo, no Abramo, and the moment of sunrise was past.

  At last, I let go a soft, profoundly relaxing sigh. I’d been wrong; the performance had been called off. Ser Abramo was safe and probably already back at his estate, wondering what had become of me.

  As I began to turn to head back down the Borgo, I caught a blur of black in the corner of my eye and pivoted around. A cloaked figure darted from shadows beneath the arch over the gate to the street immediately beneath the guard tower.

  Niccolo.

  Before I could take a single step toward him, a hooded Franciscan friar—one from the huddle that had all presumably already passed by—appeared out of a sliver of shadow and brushed elbows with Niccolo. The friar slyly palmed Niccolo a folded paper—the note that should have been waiting on the kitchen table for me that morning.

  I suppressed the urge to cry out or intervene, to avoid putting both men and myself in even more danger, and closed my mouth. The Medici’s—and the Magician’s—enemies were somewhere, watching, and soldiers were minding the eastern tower, soldiers who could easily intervene if alerted to the coming violence.

  The cloaked Niccolo slipped the note into his pocket. Just as the Franciscan friar began to move away, Niccolo unsheathed his dagger, the friar unsheathed his, and the dance began.

  Fiore, first master, first play.

  Niccolo raised the dagger in a high arc; as it came down relentlessly aimed at his victim’s chest, the friar caught his wrist perfectly, skillfully, stopping the blade in midair as he drew his own weapon with his free hand. The quick movements cause
d Niccolo’s cowl to slip back, revealing his face: the lips drawn back over gritted teeth, the dark brows colliding to form an extreme vee, the narrowed eyes full of such venom, such deep contempt that I was tempted to scream a warning to his victim.

  Second play.

  But I stopped myself. Playacting; it was only playacting, even though Niccolo was unnervingly convincing.

  With his right hand, the Franciscan swiped at Niccolo with his dagger. Unlike mine, the friar’s arms were long enough to reach his foe, and the tip of his blade sliced through Niccolo’s cloak at the level of his thigh and made him cry out in startled indignance: a surprise defensive move, one that the friar repeated to the effect that Niccolo cried out in pain again. The friar took another step closer, moving in for the kill.

  This was not what we had practiced; this was not part of the plan. This was real.

  I pulled my kitchen knife from my pocket and clumsily freed it from its wrappings, ready to enter the fray, ready to protect Niccolo.

  As I began to move, Niccolo rotated his opponent’s imprisoned wrist, slipping the dagger to the outside of the friar’s arm and then under it, moving the blade back into the vulnerable area above his victim’s heart. His movements were vehement, vicious, the look in his eyes terrifying as he gave his blade the final brutal thrust.

  The dagger struck just to the left of the breastbone. The friar let go a strangled, mortal cry and began to fall straight back, as I should have, onto rough cobblestone instead of padded leather. In mid-fall, the friar’s cowl slipped back.

  Abramo the Magician fell limp against the stone, his exposed face utterly slack.

  Shouts reverberated in my ears, but I could not have told you whether they were near or far, masculine or feminine. I ran to Abramo’s side, no longer caring about whatever enemies might have been watching. I knelt on the stones beside him, pulled away his cloak and watched blood well above his heart, an irregular darkness slowly consuming the worn brown wool of a Franciscan habit.

  During the fall, the patch over his right eye had been pushed up onto his brow. For the first time, both his eyes were exposed and open, staring sightlessly at a point far distant, one only the dead could see.

  I leaned down, letting my mantle fall around us both, shielding our faces from the crowd. What I saw hurled the breath violently from me.

  His left eye, of course, was brown like mine.

  His right eye—the one hidden from me all this time by the silk patch—was whole and unblemished. I’d assumed the eye had been missing or blind, but realized that he’d worn the patch for me. His right eye, like mine, was green.

  No wonder Lucrezia de’ Medici had gasped at the sight of me.

  Of course he had made a talisman for me when I was born. Of course he had.

  Of course he had.

  In that thunderous instant, I saw every second of time I had spent with him, from first encounter to last, in this new, fresh, glorious and terrible light.

  “Just blink,” I sobbed. “Please. They can’t see. Just please, be alive. You can’t die. Not now!”

  But the dreadful absence in his gaze remained; his body drew no breath.

  I pressed my fingers against the bloody spot on his chest, felt the empty pig’s bladder and beneath it, a padded vest. Perhaps this was a trick after all; perhaps Niccolo’s dagger had gone no further. Shielding my movements with my cloak, I cut his robe open with the kitchen knife, exposing the bladder.

  It had been pierced clean through. The vest was soaked with blood—pig’s blood, of course, reassuringly dark because it was old.

  Perhaps the play had gone exactly as Niccolo and I had practiced.

  My mind raced to reassure me: The blade had retracted, the knife hadn’t gone that far through, I would see that Abramo wasn’t really dead. It all came clear: Niccolo was proving himself to the enemy, he was a double spy of some sort for the Magician and the Medici, and I didn’t dare ruin things for him. I would quickly retreat or, better, could stay and wail that Abramo was dead, murdered.

  I lifted up the bladder ever so slightly, careful that no outsider could see my movements. The protective vest beneath was stained with the same dark blood, but it had been slit through, leaving a tear broad enough for my entire hand to slip through the padded fabric. I parted the slit enough to expose the skin beneath, and a sickening chill coursed through me.

  The flesh over the Magician’s heart was covered with fresh blood, bright red and warm.

  I lifted my contorted face to scan the growing crowd of onlookers for Niccolo, intending to scream after him that he was a traitor, that he had betrayed the Medici, so that the guards would pursue him.

  Before I could open my mouth, someone knocked me off balance and straddled Ser Abramo’s still form. He was huge, broad—a giant compared to those around him, even to the Magician.

  As I scrambled to push myself up off my backside, I glimpsed the man inside the cowl: flame-bearded and grinning, with ice pale eyes full of madness. He reached inside his cloak for a hidden weapon: a stiletto, shorter than the one Abramo carried in his cane, but no less deadly. “We’ll find out now who’s really dead,” he said cheerfully to the fallen Magician, and lifted his blade above his shoulder, its tip aimed directly at Abramo’s heart.

  “No!” I screamed. I struggled onto my knees and grasped his wrist—twice the breadth of mine—but I couldn’t slow him even a whit. Desperate, I lifted my eyes and screamed for the police, only to see Niccolo several steps distant, calling for the lunatic to come away, to hurry, that the police were running down from the guard tower. A second cloaked form appeared beside Niccolo, both of them calling for their fellow to flee.

  I stared gape-mouthed at Niccolo. He stared back, his eyes afire with a rage that teetered on insanity; a rage that would have seen me dead, had he been close enough to wield his weapon. Teeth bared, his face a tortured rictus, he shouted at his comrade, “Run!”

  The red-bearded madman ignored him and plunged his blade into the lifeless Magician’s chest again, again, while I scrambled screaming for my kitchen knife. Abramo’s body shuddered lifelessly with each strike, but made no sound, no other movement.

  “All good,” the monster said to himself, smiling. “If he wasn’t already dead, he is now.”

  I sank my kitchen knife deep into Red Beard’s forearm, the one that held the stiletto. Yowling, he dropped his stiletto in order to pull out my offending weapon. I braced for the blow—I was ready to die alongside my father rather than abandon him—but the red-haired devil hurled the kitchen knife to the cobblestone and fled to join his cohorts.

  I took up the murder weapon, thinking to flay anyone who came near us, and bent over the Magician. I put my free hand over his wound, as if I could stop the bleeding, and realized that his golden talisman was gone, missing. All that remained around his neck was the leather thong heavy with keys.

  “Breathe,” I whispered hoarsely, and bent over him. My back was to the east; my head cast a shadow over his, making his eyes look dark and sunken, the strong bones of his face skeletal. “Please, breathe…”

  But he didn’t, and I couldn’t. I looked up wanting to cry out for help, but my voice had fled with my breath, and my sight was blurred: the entire street was alive now, a dizzying swirl of dark red and blue and drab mantellos, of blank winter-white faces staring down at me, the air filled with babbling. A quartet of black-clad bodies surged toward me, too fast.

  All too fast, and all too real.

  The four guards’ short swords were drawn. They elbowed their way through the gathering crowd.

  Shouts came from passersby, and screams.

  That way! They went that way!

  Too late, they’re gone! We’ll never catch them!

  He’s dying, he’s dead, get him upstairs! Get him out of here!

  Get the boy! He’s got a dagger! He’s one of them!

  I pulled the thong from Abramo’s neck with a silent apology as the keys, still warm from his flesh, jangled. Boot so
les pounded against stone, eclipsing other sounds. A dark wool-swathed arm reached for me, an all-too-nearby blade flashed with morning light. I jumped up, yanking the edges of my short mantello out of reach of grasping fingers.

  Three of the guards swiftly surrounded Abramo’s body—one at his head, one at his waist, the third at his feet. They crouched, their knees bent directly beneath their hips.

  “Don’t take him,” I cried, my voice breaking. “Don’t take him away!”

  The fourth guard—dark-haired, with pale skin and a black mantello and cap, the whole utterly colorless—grasped my wrist while I was thus terribly distracted. “I’ve seen you—you’re a pickpocket! You helped kill him to get his purse! You little bastard!” He sprayed spittle, his face contorted by indignance. When I pulled away, he aimed the tip of his short sword at me. He seemed unaware of the stiletto in my other hand.

  I’m his friend! I wanted to shout. Niccolo did it! And a lunatic with a red beard! And they’re getting away, you idiot son of a whore!

  There wasn’t time.

  It all happened so fast in one stunning, mindless moment: The three guards counted to three and grunted as they jerked Abramo’s bloodied body up. I sank the tip of the stiletto into the shoulder of the guard holding me. It was so sharp it slid in deep without effort.

  At the sight of his own blood, my enemy roared and moved to plunge me through with his sword.

  I knew exactly what to do.

  I gripped his right wrist with my left hand, overhanded.

  At the same time I took the very long sidewise step, placing my right leg behind his, my knee deeply bent. And then I straightened my leg.

  Some downward pressure on his left shoulder, and down he went, roaring.

  Rage pressured me to kill him while he was off his feet, as if that would have somehow avenged Ser Abramo. But as the other guards staggered back to the tower with the Magician’s body, pedestrians were starting to circle around, most of them pointing at me. The guard on the ground howled, “Get him!”