After what seemed like hours, I came back to the statue and sat down, resting my head in my hands.
There was no army.
“Come on, you cretino! We have to get back! We have to save Andrea!” I cried, but I was talking to the sky.
Suddenly, I began to shake and I couldn’t stop. The sky spun around, whipped by a strong wind, and I sank down right there, under the statue of Mercury, because suddenly I understood.
There was no army. Zephyrus had caught up with me. It was not my fate to save my family — it was my fate to be the one who escaped.
Maybe the army was never here. Count Riorio could have lied about them to Papa that day he made his threats. But if he were so eager to oust the Medici and rule Florence himself, wouldn’t he have needed the pope’s army too?
There was another possibility I didn’t want to face. Perhaps they were here but Emilio never arrived. The pope’s men thought the coup had been called off and by now were back in Rome kissing rings and drinking sacramental wine.
I had watched Emilio from Fiesole. I had watched him until he was almost here. What could have happened? Then I remembered the cheering of the crowd as they tore my father apart, the way they hoarded pieces of our silver and called everyone traitor. The whole city hated us and anyone that had anything to do with us. Killing us had become a sport, and Emilio had been wearing his tunic with the Pazzi delphine on it. The rest wasn’t difficult to guess. Someone cut his head off and then rummaged through his pockets for a painting or a bit of cloth.
Not Emilio. It couldn’t be. If something happened to him it was my fault. He could have gotten away. But I sent him back. With my lie I killed that boy, my first and only friend.
“Emilio.” A rough hand was on my back. I looked up, startled. Where? I only barely understood that it was the goldsmith, and he was talking to me.
I was Emilio now.
“You should not stay here. People are beginning to stare,” he whispered. And it was true. I’d been so cocooned in my own grief that I hadn’t noticed what a scene I made, huddled here on the ground, cascading tears. Everyone who passed looked at me openly, some of them for a little too long.
“Come on, son,” the goldsmith said, a little louder now. “I’m sorry we quarreled. Let me take you home.”
I didn’t push him away. I didn’t do anything. I let him support me as we went back the way I came, slowly this time. Over the bridge. Through the Piazza della Signoria. All the while he muttered for the sake of passersby: “My boy the sissy. The events of the day have left him overexcited. You’ll have to develop a thicker skin, son, if you want to survive in this town.”
Finally, we came back to the Via dei Balastrieri but stopped short of our palazzo. Orazio ushered me in a building, and I made it over the threshold before the smoke and the heat made me choke.
Surely, I thought as I pitched forward, this man has just calmly ushered me into hell.
Chapter Nineteen
I awoke swatting at something crawling on my head. I was lying on a pallet of straw in a curtained room. A flea jumped out of the straw and onto my elbow. I flicked it off. They were crawling all over the pallet, and apparently all over me as well.
I took a deep breath. My throat was dry and scratchy as parchment. The air around me was hot and close, but I was able to squeeze some into my chest.
I leapt up and parted the curtains. Beyond was a small room with rough wooden floors swept clean. Maestro Orazio sat at an oak table scored with burn marks. His hands, the size and color of charred sausages, were wrapped around a ceramic mug.
The woman who sat next to him was a stout woman of middle age. She wore a short-sleeved dress under an apron: brown over white. She was not as red as her husband, but she still wasn’t the kind to smear goat’s-milk paste on her face. She stood over the hearth stirring a kettle of something and it smelled good. Not elaborate like eels or pheasants — maybe a kind of soup. I was hungry although I didn’t want to be.
“Are you sure, Orazio? Is there no other way?” this woman said.
Orazio shook his head. “We owe it to Signora Cenesta. It may not be as dangerous as you think, Maria. They say the boys of the Pazzi family are all accounted for. You saw as well as I did that this one is no boy.”
“What do you mean the boys are all accounted for? Where are they?” I spoke up.
The woman looked at me and then exchanged a glance with her husband. She stood and offered me her chair. “You’d best sit down,” she said.
I remained standing. “Thank you for your hospitality, but I have to find out what happened to my brothers. There may still be time.”
Maestro Orazio and his wife exchanged a glance.
“It is too late. They are beyond your reach.”
“Every one of them? All dead? Even Mamma?”
“Your mother is cloistered in a small room in your old palazzo. They will not kill her, but she will not be allowed her freedom.”
I tried to muster a measure of pity for my poor, stripped mamma, but found I didn’t have much. She still breathed; many of the others did not thanks in part to her greed.
“And my brothers? Are they all dead as well?”
“I gather you have two brothers in the clergy. They will be allowed to live.”
“And the rest?”
Neither said anything.
“Please, you must tell me: is there any hope at all?”
“Orazio,” his wife said, putting a hand on his arm. “This one will not stay put. You’d best open the shutters.”
Orazio seemed to age twenty years as he stood there, but he nodded in assent. “Stand back,” he told me. “Your disguise seems good enough, but we don’t know. Best you not be seen.”
Harsh sunlight filled the room. It had been sunset the last I remembered — almost a full day had passed.
I shielded my eyes from the glare; then, slowly, as they became accustomed to the brightness, I inched forward and looked outside.
We were on the second floor of a building on the same street as our palazzo, only a few blocks closer to the Arno and on the opposite side. From where I stood I could barely make out our palazzo walls. Down below, the streets were in chaos. I could no longer make out anyone calling slogans, like delphine, or palle; it just seemed like a citywide tavern brawl. I don’t think the citizens knew what they were fighting about. People were hitting each other, pelting each other with rocks, shouting insults. It all sounded like one giant cry. Then Maestro Orazio nudged me and pointed at a spot above the crowds that was level with our eyes.
I had never seen the Bargello prison up close. Andrea always shut the curtains tight on the carriage when we went past. I’d always wondered why.
And now I knew. Corpses were strung from its walls, blackened things with hands tied behind their backs and jackdaws picking at their eye sockets — the ones that still had hands — and heads. There were little bits of people hanging as well — an arm here, a leg there. At the beginning of this display was a head on a pike.
How did people even identify the remains of these poor souls? How would anyone know to claim that bald head?
My blood went cold. Madonna. That was my father’s head. And next to it, pieces of Renato. There was Galeotto, then Giovanni, and next to him Niccolo. That was my family strung up there as a warning to others.
“How could this have happened?” I said, staring, my mouth agape. “Where was the army?”
“What army?” Signora Maria asked.
“The pope’s army. He said they’d be there.”
“Who said? The pope?” Maestro Orazio asked.
“No. Count Riorio.” Before I was done pronouncing his name, I understood the extent of his betrayal. “Cretino,” I muttered.
Maestro Orazio nodded in agreement. “Count Riorio is back in Forli. They say he has barricaded himself in his castle and lives in fear like a coward. I don’t know what he promised you, but it is published abroad that he is not a man of his word.”
&nbs
p; “That’s the least of it,” I said.
“There was no army,” Maria said gently, pouring me a mug of water from an earthen pitcher. “Please. You are not well. Sit down.”
I accepted the mug but remained standing. The water was filthy and brown, but I drank it deeply and gratefully, as though it were the nectar of the gods.
In the meantime I kept looking at the grotesque display hanging from the Bargello walls. I counted everyone, twice and three times. There were a few extra body parts. But three of my brothers were missing: Antonio and Lionardo were not there, but they were clergymen as Orazio had said. But there was another body missing.
“Where is Andrea?”
Orazio flashed his eyes in the direction of the prison. “Inside.”
I leaned against the windowpane. So my brother had joined the ranks of those piteous souls, whose cries I’d heard from our rooftop, those who had forgotten how to dream.
“Then we have to get him out.”
“Nobody comes out of there, Emilio,” Maria said, taking extra time, practicing my strange new name. “Unless they’re dead.”
I looked down at the street and counted the Medici guard in front of the Bargello. I stopped counting at twenty. I could not break in alone. There were only the two people standing next to me to take my part. After what I’d seen, I knew they harbored me at great personal risk.
“Grazie,” I said. “I’m very mindful of what you’ve done for me. Now I have to decide what’s next.”
Maestro Orazio used a meaty hand to scratch his head. Signora Maria went back to stirring her soup. I had a feeling that their movements were rehearsed, agreed upon in advance. “We have been talking,” he said. “Your nonna — rest her soul — once did us a kindness. We had a son many years ago. He coughed black before he was ten years old. We summoned doctors who let his blood and charged us money but didn’t cure him. The leeches got fat; our son got thin. Then we sent for Signora Cenesta. She spoke to him so tenderly — wiping his brow. She even sang and rocked him to sleep. Then when he was resting comfortably, she whispered to us that our only child was going to die.”
Signora Maria wiped away a tear from her face. I had no idea how old her tragedy was, but I knew to her it would always be as fresh as mine was today.
“Mi dispiace,” I said. “Nonna could be blunt.”
Maestro Orazio shook his head. “You misunderstand — she did us a kindness. She didn’t give us false hope. Because of her we were able to make him comfortable as he left this life. Because of her we were able to be strong.”
Orazio reached into his shirt and pulled out three objects. The first was Captain Umberto’s squarcato. The second was a bloodstained letter; the third, a ring with a black dog. The seal on the letter was broken.
“These fell out of your shirt when we carried you upstairs earlier. This ring is my handiwork. Forgive me, but I read the letter. I had to know.”
I picked up the ring and ran my finger over the now-familiar black dog. “Such intricate work,” Orazio said. “I don’t make very many of these. May I?” I handed the ring back to him. He popped open a hidden hinge to reveal a small compartment — big enough for a deadly dose of poison, discreet enough that no one would be able to detect if it were dumped in someone’s wine or soup.
I took the ring from him. I’d never seen the compartment before, but watching it spring open, it was as though little bits of hidden knowledge had sprung open as well. I brought the ring with its compartment up to my nose knowing before I did what I would smell: almonds. Nonna had either been making a very fine pastry, or she had used this compartment for arsenic.
So now I knew for sure: the black dog was her symbol, a symbol of death. Nonna was a killer, hunched over, laboring in a dark, hidden chamber. And yet I still loved her. I knew that everything Nonna did she did for us. She was no villain: she was a warrior. This ring was her weapon.
“Such a ring has value with certain patrons,” Orazio continued. “I would be pleased to buy it from you for twenty florins. It’s not much, but it would be enough to buy your passage to Rome, for example . . .”
“. . . or Venice,” I said.
“Bene. Or Venice,” he said.
I fell silent. Two days ago I would have taken the offer, but I was a different person then. I was still Flora.
And now, as Emilio, I felt I didn’t deserve Venice. I didn’t even deserve to dream of it. Men had died around me yesterday. One in my lap; several just out of reach. It made no difference. For all I’d been able to do for them, they might all have been out of reach.
“There’s another alternative,” Signora Maria said. “You could use it to buy your apprenticeship in the shop, with us.”
I looked up at her.
“We’ve been discussing this,” Orazio continued. “They are not looking for any boys, Emilio. Your brothers are all accounted for; your father is dead. Your married sisters who live in Florence have been stripped of their possessions and cast out — and so shall your mother be. The news from the Signoria is that only two Pazzi daughters are still at large. One of them was seen leaving in the company of a kitchen boy. No one seems to know what happened to the second. No one even knows what she looks like. At least that’s what they say. You were visible enough to the right sort. That sort will not tell out of respect for your dear nonna.”
After what I’d seen today, I found it hard to believe that anyone would hold back in bringing a member of my family to justice.
Maria apparently agreed. “We don’t know that, Orazio,” she said, covering his sausage-shaped hand with hers.
“You’re right. We don’t know, we only suspect. And it’s only fair to tell you that there is a substantial reward for information about Lorenza Pazzi. You would have to stay indoors all the time. At least in the beginning. Maybe after the first few months we could let you out for mass.”
I said nothing; I fingered Nonna’s ring.
Maestro Orazio continued: “It wouldn’t be the same, you know. We are not like your family. We don’t wear fine clothes here, nor do we dine as well as they did at your house. Some days, when commissions are thin, we don’t dine at all.”
“And you could never take the place of our lost son,” Signora Maria said softly.
“Maria, please, she’s been through enough.”
“It’s important that she know the truth, Orazio. This one is stronger than you think.”
Maestro Orazio looked at me from the corner of his eye. “My wife is trying to tell you that you would live with us and dine with us but you would not be ours. We would shelter you to discharge an old debt; nothing more. We owe Signora Cenesta that much.”
Maria sighed. “Surely you can understand,” she said. “We have lost the person we loved most in the world. We do not want to go through that again ever in this lifetime.”
I watched her gently place her hand in Maestro Orazio’s, and from seeing the tenderness of the gesture, I knew she was kidding herself.
And yet I could understand how they felt. I had no more goodbyes left in me after today. Better to armor yourself in lovelessness.
“Also,” Maestro Orazio said. “The view from here is not so good. Perhaps it would be too much. But you would be of use. Signora Cenesta said you liked to work and that you served them well.”
I shook my head. “Not well enough.” And although I tried, I couldn’t help myself. I sobbed, a ferocious, stabbing sob that began in my belly and slowly came up to my head.
“Allora,” Maria said, pushing Nonna’s letter toward me. “Let’s give this youth some time to consider our offer.” She pushed my letter toward me. “Perhaps this will help make up your mind. When you’re ready, we’ll be in the shop.”
“Carissima Flora,” the letter began . . .
By the time you get this I will be gone and you will be en route to the sanctuary of the convent. I know it is not your first choice, nor is it mine. At least you will be safe. Your father will not heed my counsel and is determined t
o act against the Medici.
You have been a good girl. That day I found you in my chamber I saw the questions in your eyes and I told you that someday I would answer them, although I suspect you already know the truth: I am a murderess, Flora. I murdered my husband, I murdered the man who pushed you in the garden. There have been others.
Murder is a mortal sin — not the kind you can reveal in confession. When I die there will be no reprieve for me. I knew this years ago and vowed to help whom I could, hoping my good works would balance the bad. I brewed my atonement from herbs and broth. And not once in the autumn and winter of my life did I purchase yellow orpiment to grind into arsenic. The room you discovered lay shut for years.
And then that ape of a man shoved you.
For now we come to something I should have told you years ago. I love you, Flora. Until you came along I fancied myself all dried out. I tended to the sick and to your brothers and sisters because it was my duty.
You were more than my duty, cara mia. Even when you were a baby you had a way of smiling that drew my heart from my chest. And even now when I saw you standing in front of my chamber, holding the goblet with the arsenic in it, I was scared and I knew you were the one thing I couldn’t part with. I thought God himself had come to take you away from me. I was spared that day, but I knew that my luck had ended.
So that is why you are in the convent now, cara mia. You will not make a good nun, but at least you will live. And you don’t have to be there forever. Emilio is a good boy. I’ve seen the way he looks at you and even though you do not look at him the same way, you are both young yet. I’ve spoken to him and he agrees. He will stay here working with us. I will find a way to get money to him gradually, although not too much. I have seen what too much money does to people. He will come for you when he has enough to make a start.
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