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

by Agustín Bernaldo Palatchi

“The ritual,” said Mauricio, who was by her side together with their children, “is perfectly studied right down to the last detail, with the deliberate purpose of robbing the friars of the respect their followers have for them. Centuries of tradition have stamped in our minds that we are what we are by the clothes we wear and by taking away their ecclesiastical dignity, people stop seeing them as priests. Moreover, by meekly accepting the verbal and symbolic punishment, they are recognizing their own guilt. However, Savonarola, might yet come out winning from this final duel, for once he is on the scaffold they will be unable to submit him to more torture, including if his voice were to resound again like thunder in the conscience of the Florentines. The most lethal enemy is often the one who has nothing to lose.”

  Lorena agreed with her husband. For a while now, he had become much more observant, perhaps in order to transcribe all he saw for he had acquired the habit of writing daily, for many hours, shut up in his study. On what undertaking had he embarked? Was it related to the innumerable questions he tended to ask concerning her feelings and memories? Lorena knew the hiding place of the key to the drawer where his writings were kept, but in the same way that she respected her mother’s silence, she also did the same with her husband. Stealing the secrets of a loved one, as she had sometimes done in the past, was only permitted if it helped them, not to satisfy one’s curiosity, that ugly but seductive vice. Yet, was it not morbid curiosity that had brought them to the square of the Signoria to witness the execution of those friars?

  The first to go along the walkway toward the gallows was Friar Silvestre. Lorena felt sad for that simple and frugal man whose only sin had been to be too credulous. According to rumors, Savonarola’s so-called visions had often been clever interpretations of candid Friar Silvestre’s dreams. She wondered if he had dreamed, on his last night, of his own death. That question, like so many others, would never have an answer. The only words that issued from Friar Silvestre’s mouth were, “Jesus, Jesus,” just as they hanged him, his legs dangling, from the great cross-shaped poles overlooking the scaffold. As the noose around his neck was not sufficiently tight, Friar Silvestre was able to repeat ceaselessly the name of the savior before drawing his last, liberating breath. The next man to die was Friar Domenico, but this time the executioner made a better job of it, thus avoiding him the long and painful agony that Friar Silvestre had been obliged to endure.

  Savonarola, at long last, after having contemplated the death of his companions, took his last walk in life and advanced barefoot along the wooden footbridge, avoiding the eyes of the multitude who had once acclaimed him. His gaze searched for the infinite, that mysterious place with which he would soon be acquainted. His lips, from which in the past had issued the most prodigious oratory, remained firmly sealed. From the crowd, a voice cried out, “Oh Prophet, now is the time to perform a miracle!” Savonarola cast his head down slightly and continued walking without making any gesture or responding to the taunt. As the noose was put around his neck, he mumbled a few inaudible words without looking at the crowd. After this, he accepted his fate with resignation and put himself in the capable hands of the hangman, who by this time seemed to be improving with practice. And so, in silence, Savonarola bid his last farewell to Florence.

  Mauricio was wrong, for Savonarola did have something to lose: his immortal soul. The false prophet, who had defied the pope by accusing him of being the antichrist, had finally submitted to his authority induced by the fear of eternal damnation.

  Lorena looked discreetly toward the area where she had spotted her sister. The first face she saw was Luca’s, whose appearance seemed hardly any better than that of the men who had just been executed. He had lost a lot of hair and his face reminded her of wrinkled parchment, its former smoothness a thing of the past. She knew through Alessandro that Luca had been extremely ill for the last month. What had seemed at first to be a slight ailment had now become a serious illness that no doctor was able to diagnose, let alone find a cure. He could hardly talk, a terrible pain afflicting his whole being hampered the slightest movement, forcing him to spend most of the day prostrated in bed. Despite the household servants helping him regularly to change position as he lay down, his body was a mass of bed sores. If her mother’s information was correct, which it was, Luca had made an effort verging on the superhuman in order to see Friar Girolamo Savonarola, whom he idolized, one last time. Lorena could imagine how disillusioned he must have felt with a prophet in whom he had put so much faith and who had not only failed to create any miracle whatsoever but at the last instance had not even denied the accusations, answering them only with total silence. Without a doubt, no one would have acted in that fashion if they were convinced they were acting righteously as transmitters of the divine will. Her sister Maria perhaps also shared that opinion, because gently touching the arm of her husband, whose glazed eyes seemed to find it difficult to understand what he was seeing, made him know that it might be suitable for them to leave the piazza.

  “It is time for us to go as well,” said Mauricio, taking her affectionately by the shoulder.

  Yes, he was right. Certain things, thought Lorena, should not be seen, although she found it difficult to take her eyes away from the three executed bodies. She remembered how, as a little girl, she used to play watching how stones fell when thrown from a great height. Human beings and stones might be different, but when dropped into the void they fell in exactly the same way, hurtling toward the bottom of the abyss.

  134

  Luca felt that a whirlwind was sucking him into a dark tunnel that led him into a great emptiness. He woke up to find himself in bed, in his own room, with not a soul around. Finding it very difficult to move and even to breathe, he was also afraid he was choking, but a desperate will to live gave him enough strength to draw himself up and sit on his bed. He slowly calmed down. Air once more filled his lungs. It had only been a dream. A nightmare in which his friend Pietro Manfredi was welcoming him into hell.

  Without a doubt, the strange illness he was suffering from was responsible for his recurring nightmares. For several weeks now, the mere idea of going to sleep filled him with anguish, for his nights were permanently filled with visions of Hades and the most abysmal grief. Nor did his days offer him much consolation. Added to his physical suffering, there was also the moral one of seeing how his otherwise solicitous wife had become cold and distant now, in his most needy hour. Everything had started going wrong on the morning that Maria, ignoring his threats, went to her mother’s house instead of accompanying him to the Piazza della Signoria. The next day he began feeling ill, but attached little importance to it, never imagining that it was the beginning of a progressive and vertiginous descent into the inferno. The painful illness started to gain ground inexorably and no doctor had managed to procure any relief for him.

  Luca coughed, spitting out a viscous, thick brown liquid. Why did God punish one of his most faithful servants in this way? Had his ideas not always been in accordance with the most pious rules? Had he not been an exemplary father? It seemed to Luca that the mucous was invading his entire body, making him gag, filling his throat and obstructing every orifice through which he could breathe. Panic stricken, he got out of bed and tried to walk. His head was splitting as if the substance that was clogging up his throat had spread to his brain, making him incapable of thinking and asphyxiating him.

  Antonio, the butler, opened the bedroom door. Luca felt a certain relief. Feeling nauseated and filled with a strange sensation of emptiness, he almost lost his balance. Unaware even of his own movements, he clutched the butler, looking for support. A great blackness, devoid of texture, taste, or sound engulfed him and Luca Albizzi was no more.

  135

  Lorena felt as if sharp needles were stabbing her in the stomach as she walked slowly, trying to hide her nervous tremor. Going to Luca Albizzi’s wake was causing her such apprehension that it was only at the cost of enormous efforts that she had summoned up enough courage to go to her sister
’s house. If truth be known, she was happy that Luca had died. It had been because of him that Mauricio had been tortured and the consequences of that ordeal would be with him for the rest of his life. She remembered only too well how he had tried to take advantage of her under threat of having her husband executed. It was only due to the brilliant intervention of the lawyer Antonio Rinuccini, together with the firm support of the Calimala guild, that they had managed to exonerate her husband from a false accusation of treason. Below ground, Luca would be unable to conspire and the world would be a better place for everyone, except perhaps for Maria and her children.

  Her sister had shown her love for him and probably, in his own fashion, he had been a good father. Those reasons in themselves meant she should show some support, for Lorena knew how unhappy she would be if anything were to happen to Mauricio. During his imprisonment, she had imagined that terrible possibility a thousand and one times and the memory of what she had felt at the time still filled her with anguish. On the other hand, Lorena feared that her sister might reproach her for attending the wake without having been invited and that she might be asked to leave such an intimate ceremony, in which only the most loved ones were made welcome. This could more than likely happen, considering how long it had been since they had talked and that their latest clashes had even stopped her from attending the christening of Maria’s latest child.

  Lorena was very aware that she might be rejected, although she was willing to be publicly humiliated if it might open the door to a possible reconciliation. Mauricio, aware of the nervous state she was in, helped her across the threshold of the house and supported her gallantly by the arm. Lorena was grateful to him, otherwise she might have found it difficult to maintain her composure. Many of Luca’s friends shot her icy glances, seeming to resent the presence of one who had sustained such an appalling relationship with her brother-in-law. Tension was high, but Flavia defused the embarrassing situation by welcoming her warmly and accompanying her to another room where Maria was alone. Lorena supposed that her sister had preferred to be away from the rest for a while, in order to pray in peace for the soul of the deceased, and she was grateful that this moment of intimacy might provide an ideal opportunity in which to talk to her.

  “I am so sorry, my sister. I mean it with all my heart.”

  “Ah, the heart! Mine is suffering in more ways than you could ever imagine,” lamented Maria. Her face was a picture of sadness and tiredness, but a halo of serenity surrounded her, despite her tears.

  Taken aback by such an unexpected affirmation, Lorena was at a loss for words. Her sister continued talking. “Beneath that noble appearance, Luca concealed sinister secrets of which I was unaware until a few weeks ago when I realized that he was the one who had drummed up a false accusation against Mauricio. Also,” she added, lowering her voice and looking away, “I found out all about the sexual blackmail to which he subjected you. Had I not heard such evil accounts coming from his own mouth, I would never have believed them. However, that night, Pietro Manfredi and my late husband were sampling an exquisite wine that had just arrived from Burgundy. They thought I was asleep in my apartments and never realized that I was listening to them behind the dining room door. The next day, I did not have the strength to accompany him to the ordeal by fire that was to take place in the Piazza della Signoria and I went to look for consolation in mother’s house.”

  “Your sister,” intervened Flavia, “gave me strict instructions not to breathe a word of anything she confessed to me that morning.”

  Lorena thought immediately of what all these revelations implied. Many poisons existed that were impossible to detect in highly spiced food and Luca’s illness had started shortly after the ordeal. Had she not known her sister and mother so well, she might have suspected that someone close at hand had cut Luca’s life short, but this was totally out of the question. The avenging hand, she concluded, must have belonged to destiny, which freed her sister from continuing to live subjected to someone she could only despise. Luca’s body now lay in a coffin and there was nothing left to ask or to answer. Yet, there were certain questions concerning her own past silence that still required an explanation.

  “Forgive me, Maria, for not revealing Luca’s treacherous conduct. The reason I never said anything, never talked to you about it, was because I thought you would never believe me and all that it would achieve was to make the situation even worse. As for you, mother, I tried to save you from unnecessary suffering … ”

  “You acted wisely, my sister,” Maria said consoling her and then beginning to cry. Her face was streaming with tears and every word she uttered lashed at the spirit with more force than a storm-tossed sea. “It is so painful to realize now that everything I ever believed in and all I fought so hard for was based on a lie. I was unaware of my husband’s dark side and it has now been proved that all those sermons of Savonarola’s, which we followed with such blind faith, had about as much consistency as the wind. Therefore my life is also based on a falsehood, a sort of cruel lie.”

  Flavia embraced the sisters, both in uncontainable floods of tears.

  “We love you, Maria. Nothing could be truer than that.”

  “It would seem,” reflected Maria, “that only love is capable of crossing entire deserts without dying of thirst, becoming soaked in blood, and yet remain as white as the driven snow and survive all manner of lies just to convince us that we should continue living. I judged you harshly, my sister, and many of my judgments were mistaken. The time has come to bury the past. If I have resisted from breaking up into a thousand pieces like a shattered mirror, it is because of the immense love I feel for my children, but also the courage you have shown in coming here has helped me so much.”

  “At the moment,” stated Lorena, “there is no one more courageous in this room than you.”

  Lorena had witnessed many miracles in her life, but this was particularly special. In a way, she felt that her family’s blood had remained dormant for generations and that now, at this precise moment, it seemed to be regenerating and breaking down the wall holding it back. She felt greatly moved and tears came to her eyes.

  “Logs burn up and eventually coals extinguish. But the ashes? What happens to the ashes?” She had asked herself this a long time ago when she believed that the rift with her sister was irreversible. Perhaps the ashes of love were indestructible seeds.

  136

  “Maybe loving is just simply accepting those whom you hold dear, the way they are, without attempting to change them,” said Maria, gently taking her mother’s hand.

  “I am so proud of you, my daughter … I am overjoyed that you accept with all your heart the truth concerning our family. I feared your reaction, but when Michel and I decided to live together after Luca’s death, I obviously had to tell you.”

  Flavia had confessed her story with Michel Blanch and had even revealed his real name. In order to hide his past and the fact he had been a priest, he had assumed a new identity and become a cultured French professor going by the name of Bertrán Turlery.

  “You did well, Mother. I am so tired of deception and could not have borne another lie. Also, I was starting to suspect the truth. Michel’s eyes are the same light blue as Lorena’s, their intelligent, broad foreheads are so alike and he is incapable of hiding the deep feelings he harbors toward her and her children. There lies perhaps the hidden source of our differences, jealousies, and confrontations. Now, at last, we are free from all our secrets.”

  Flavia reflected for a while, as she gazed at her favorite cat, stretching in the sunlight of the garden. Her daughter had always been more intelligent then she appeared, for she often hid her innermost thoughts behind a wall of silence, yet not the tiniest detail ever escaped her notice.

  “My first reaction was one of indignation, imagining the deception which Francesco had suffered, my loving father and your faithful husband. You know how much I admired him and how united we were. Moreover, the recent events in my life have shown
me how easy it is to be mistaken in one’s judgment of others. Sometimes, one’s sense of duty is nothing more than a mask that prevents us from recognizing reality, a false guide hypocrites use to hide behind. Believe me, I know what I am talking about. Under Savonarola I felt so virtuous, so superior to those who did not follow his precepts to the letter … I even went so far as to accuse half the Florentines, including my sister, of being perverse servants of evil. Then my small world broke into a thousand pieces and I discovered that it was all a lie … Everything has changed and I cannot continue judging others, even less you, Mother. I know that Michel and you love each other deeply. He is a good man and my sister a marvelous person. The time has come for the dead to bury their own dead. A part of me lies also dead, by their side with them and next to their graves. Therefore, let us leave her to rest in peace for the Maria that is alive now will cry no more. The time has come to start anew, Mother. I love you and want you to be immensely happy.”

  Flavia wept, releasing the tears she had kept in the deepest recesses of her soul for far too many years. Both profoundly moved, she and Maria fell into each other’s arms. That embrace finally put a seal on their past and opened the door to their hearts.

  Epilogue

  1500–1503

  Whatever is, has already been, and whatever will be, already is.

  Ecclesiastes, 3:15

  Perhaps time is a wave that we can ride.

  —MAURICIO COLOMA

  137

  Florence

  April 28, 1500

  Mauricio went over his notes about the execution of Savonarola, as he sat facing the crypt of the church of San Miniato. Two years had passed since his death and, at last, he felt satisfied with the description inscribed on the sheepskin vellum of his notebook. On occasions, writing was like observing reality through the eyes of someone else, and an inexpressible feeling of happiness would overcome him when he felt he had captured a faithful account of a viewpoint different from his own.