On this 5th day before the Feast of the Assumption
Your son, Iacopo de’ Medici
The summary of Iacopo’s plan chilled her. He is planning something, something that reeks of violence, she thought. A dutiful son should surely avenge his father’s death. But what if Iacopo plans to follow in his father’s bloody footsteps, weighting his eternal soul with the evil of murder? I know not what he plots—but even if I did, how could I hope to stop him?
* * *
The courtroom was packed with spectators but eerily silent as Giovanni de’ Medici was led, arms manacled behind his back, into the Sala della Pace. From my scribe’s seat next to the judge, I watched until he was close enough for me to see the haze of stubble on his unshaven chin, the taut sinews of his neck, the beading of moisture along his brow. When the court official began to speak, I forced myself to look away, dipped my pen in ink, and began to write.
Record of the Trial of Giovanni de’ Medici
Commune di Siena
Kalendae Augustus 1347
Giovanni de’ Medici, from Florence but traveling for business in Siena, knowingly mortally wounded with a knife a night watchman of Siena, Cristoforo Buonaventura, in the belly. The encounter was witnessed by a citizen of Siena, Gabriele Beltrano Accorsi, who attempted to save the life of Cristoforo without success, and subsequently informed the Podestà of what he had seen and heard. Messer de’ Medici was brought before the Podestà, a good man of great prowess and fairness. There being but one witness to the crime, special consideration was made. As the deed was committed late into the night and in secrecy, only one witness was required to testify to the truth of the events that transpired, Ne crimina remaneant impunita—lest the crimes go unpunished. The defendant called upon one procurator, Messer Nicolai di Coppo of Bologna, to represent his case. Objection was raised to holding the suspect in prison for more than one week. Messer di Coppo then denied the existence of adequate incriminating evidence, but this was dismissed by the court. Finally argument was made that the defendant acted in self-defense. Consilia were requested by the Podestà, the most Honorable Guerra Sambonifacio, to establish,through the writings of the most respected jurists, whether it truly met the definition of homicide by legal statute.
After a prolonged discussion, the nature of the evidence proved to be sufficient to establish the crime as homicide with malicious intent, perpetrated by Giovanni de’ Medici. The act of violence was deemed most grave not only because of its mortal consequences, but also the nature of the victim, who was acting in his rightful role to protect the Sienese citizens.
On this day, Messer Giovanni de’ Medici was thus condemned to death by hanging at the hands of the Podestà and jurists acting on the Podestà’s behalf.
Signed by my hand and no other,
Beatrice Alessandra Trovato
August 21, 1347
On the morning of the execution Bartolomeo knelt on the hard floor of his chamber. He wished that this day had not arrived, wished that he had not been assigned to accompany the Florentine to his death on the scaffold. His prayers buzzed in his head like a swarm of hornets, insistent and ominous.
Dear God of Mercy and Redemption, let me do your will in leading this prisoner to his end
Help me guide him to a good and penitent death
Give my feet strength as I walk the path of the condemned
Let my prayers guide the soul from his tortured body.
He paused to make a more personal appeal, hoping the Virgin might be more amenable to the private worries of a young priest lacking confidence:
Please, Holiest Virgin, when it comes time for me to speak, do not let my voice falter.
Bartolomeo closed his eyes, allowing the figure of the Virgin to blossom in his vision. He often imagined her as Duccio’s Maestà, mysterious and magnificent. Bartolomeo had looked upon that painting so many times that he was able to call up every detail from memory, and the image often calmed him. But today the face of the Queen of Heaven blurred and he could not make out her features, and the more he struggled, the less clear her face became. As Bartolomeo donned his robes he could not tell what unnerved him more: the task before him or the way in which the Virgin eluded him on this day. He hoped it did not presage disaster.
* * *
I could have stayed away from Giovanni de’ Medici’s execution. But the hours I’d spent in the courtroom bound me inextricably to the fate of the criminal whose condemnation I had recorded. I had seen many people die horrible deaths in the twenty-first century—from gunshots to the head, massive cerebral hemorrhages—but I had never seen a scheduled, state-sanctioned, heavily attended execution.
I kept hearing Gabriele’s testimony in my head. His lack of visible distress was so familiar to me that I’d found it almost as poignant as outright emotion. Our eyes met as he’d left the Sala, and I saw the gravity in his face, the knowledge of what might happen as a result of the evidence he had provided. On the evening before the execution, Clara came to my room with a cup of wine and a bowl of soup. I motioned her to join me, not wanting to be left alone with my thoughts.
“Do you want some of this food? I’m not hungry tonight.” Clara’s face fell. “I’m just anxious about tomorrow.” I didn’t want to say I’d never seen a hanging.
“You have seen the Florentine? I have heard he is the size of a lion with a mane of golden hair and a savage temper. They say Ser Medici bit a prison guard on the arm, and the wound festered so that the guard nearly died.” Clara told the tale with alternating breathless horror and relish.
I had seen him, of course. His features were burned in my brain, eyes seething with barely suppressed rage. His elegant clothes and fine grooming proclaimed his nobility—but he had the soul of a murderer. “I’ve seen quite a lot of him. I can’t imagine him biting anyone, but you never know.” Clara took the information in, satisfied. I suspected she’d repeat it as soon as she left me. “I assume you’ve seen hangings before?”
“This is only the second hanging of the year. The last was also for homicide,” she said, matter-of-factly. “It might bring a large crowd.”
“Do you wish you hadn’t seen it?”
“It is a terrible sight, surely,” Clara said, furrowing her smooth forehead. “After my first, I had nightmares for weeks. Umiltà had to give me a sleeping draught.”
“Why did you watch?”
“Executions are communal justice made visible,” she said seriously, “and citizens learn best from what they see.”
I wondered whether she was reciting something she’d been taught. “Then it doesn’t bother you to see your government kill someone?”
“The Podestà, his police, and i Noveschi keep us safe,” she said simply, and I saw there was no contradiction in her mind between the government’s acts of violence and its peaceful purpose. “Umiltà says the wards must watch the executions, as an example of what befalls those who fail to resist the temptations of the devil. Citizens must see the consequences of crime, so men contemplating evil deeds will instead seek the wisdom of God.”
I’d heard these arguments in my old time, though not always with a religious bent. I wasn’t sure whether I found Clara’s reiteration comforting or disturbing.
“Besides,” she added cheerfully, “he’s a foreigner.”
* * *
The following morning I woke to the sounds of a crowd congregating outside. I dressed and went to the Ospedale entrance. Three horsemen wearing the black and white of the commune rode into the crowd. Their brass horns blared a harsh fanfare, and the middle trumpeter stood in his saddle to proclaim the news.
“Giovanni de’ Medici of Florence has been convicted of homicide by the Podestà’s court. His sentence: execution by hanging!” The mood in the crowd was dangerous. Groups of adolescent and younger boys held rocks in their hands, looking ready for a fight. A chant rose up from one side of the piazza: “Death to the Florentine!” Soon it had spread through the mob.
The high bells of th
e torre began to ring. The crowd parted and I saw the somber procession: three priests walking beside a horse-drawn dung cart. Giovanni de’ Medici rode inside, hands bound behind him in the grip of a grim-looking guard with a sword at his belt. Giovanni looked straight ahead, swaying with the cart’s irregular movement over the stones.
One boy threw a stone that glanced harmlessly off the cart’s side. A rain of stones followed the first, one striking Giovanni in the forehead and drawing blood that dripped down to the bridge of his nose. He did not flinch or speak. I recognized the tongue-tied priest from the cathedral, chanting prayers as he walked alongside the cart.
The procession swelled as we headed downhill. “Penitenza, penitenza, penitenza,” the onlookers chanted: penitence. But the crowd was demanding something from Giovanni that he refused to deliver. He remained as silent as the guard beside him.
“He will not repent his acts of evil, even as he approaches death,” a woman muttered next to me. “He deserves to have his neck stretched, and be thrown to the torments of hell for all eternity.” She spat into the gutter.
We passed out of the walled city through the Porta Giustizia. The crowd slowed, and I saw the scaffold rising starkly above us, a gangly monster waiting for its meal. Giovanni was led out to stand before the mass of onlookers while a hollow-cheeked man with a scarred face dropped the noose over Giovanni’s neck. The little priest, his hands trembling, pulled a crucifix out from the folds of his robe and held it before the prisoner’s face.
“Look upon the cross, that you may die in God’s sight.” The priest’s voice trailed off with a final squeak, but he’d gotten the words out. I heard a collective gasp from the crowd as Giovanni turned his head away from the cross before him.
“Have you not one word to commend yourself to God?”
Giovanni smiled a strange, cruel smile. “Siena will rot for her role in my death.”
The executioner kicked the block from under Giovanni’s feet in one swift move, and the noose jerked sickeningly with its new weight. The little priest fell to the ground as the crowd pressed forward with a roar.
I now knew why I hadn’t found records of an executed Medici when I’d searched before. It was because I hadn’t written them yet.
* * *
The guards did not cut Giovanni’s body down after the hanging but let it dangle, twisting on its rope. “As an example to the enemies of Siena, and those who defy the will of God,” a guard proclaimed, to cheers from the crowd. Iacopo watched in horror, crouching behind a thorny bush. He remained there for hours, until a flock of crows came for his father’s open eyes. Overcome by sudden fatigue, he closed his eyes against the sight and slept. He awoke to the sound of young boys playing. For a moment he imagined he was sitting in the courtyard of his family palazzo while his little cousins laughed and threw a leather ball around the central fountain.
Iacopo stood cautiously and saw a group of boys scaling the gibbet to cut off fingers from his father’s corpse, joint by joint. They gathered, laughing, beneath the hanging body and began to play a gruesome game of dice with the hacked digits. Iacopo vomited into the bushes. He could barely stand for the trembling of his limbs but managed to stagger away from the scaffold, back uphill toward the city gates. He avoided the road, afraid of being seen, but the boys, too absorbed in their game, took no notice of him.
The guards at the porta eyed him suspiciously. His clothes were rumpled and reeking, and his hair full of twigs. When the men waved him along he exhaled with silent relief. Iacopo returned to the inn where he’d spent the past week. He’d wisely thought to give a false name there, as the Medici name was being cursed throughout the city. His arrival was met with disgust by the innkeeper Semenzato, who barred the door with his wide body.
“I’ll have no drunken brawls in my establishment, I warn you, no matter what you pay for the privilege.”
“I became ill upon the road today, and collapsed into a roadside ditch. I trust your hospitality will be as good as it has been these past six days.”
“Any word of trouble and you’ll be out on your backside, ill or not,” Semenzato said with threat in his voice.
Iacopo swallowed the insults he had in mind; the innkeeper’s officiousness must be tolerated if he were to find rest. The tavern patrons backed away from him as he passed through the room to the stairs.
In his chamber the despair and horror of the day tore through Iacopo afresh. He lay upon the floor, weeping but without the damp solace of tears.
Hours later, Iacopo woke to a persistent knocking on the door of his chamber. He rose before he called out leave to enter. The black-haired chambermaid stared at him without speaking.
“Have you not seen a man recovering from illness before? Bring me fresh water and a cloth.”
“I am here to deliver a message, Ser.”
“Well, then, speak.”
“Only that your mother seeks you, Ser. She is waiting outside. But she called you Medici. Have you two surnames? I knew it was you by her description.”
My mother. “Water first, before I receive my guest,” Iacopo said, leaving the maid’s dangerous questions unanswered. The girl left the room without another word, returning silently with water and then leaving again. Iacopo managed to wash his face and dress himself in clean clothes before his mother arrived.
Iacopo felt strange looking at her, his sight unnaturally vivid and bright. The fur edging of Immacolata’s hood shone white against its dark red wool. Iacopo stared into his mother’s face in a way he could not remember doing since he’d become a man. Her eyes were brown and large, with thick dark lashes, and her hair had been braided and coiled beside her ears, entwined with a ribbon of dark red. She must have been very beautiful once, in the bloom of her youth. But his words came out harsher than his thoughts, words his father might have said.
“You are too late.” Iacopo saw his mother flinch and felt his stomach curl in a mirror of her distress.
“Your father is dead?”
“The crows have come for him, I saw them myself.”
“And did he repent before his death?”
“He damned Siena with his last breath.”
Immacolata’s hands flew to her heart. “Iacopo, I fear for your safety here, now that Siena’s citizens may be inflamed to violence. Come back with me to Firenze where our name is celebrated rather than scorned. I have lost my husband, and would not lose my only child.”
Iacopo shook his head. “I am no longer the boy I used to be. My father has instructed me to assume his business dealings here, as befits my inheritance. I will fulfill that trust.” He sounded as if he were trying to convince even himself.
“Of course, Iacopo.” She made an effort not to call him little Iacopo, though at that moment he looked smaller to her than ever. Perhaps now he might grow into his father’s power—though, God willing, leaving a measure of his father’s cruelty behind. At that moment, the image of crows attacking Giovanni’s golden head came into her mind unbidden.
“What was he like in his last days, Iacopo? Did he despair? Did he send a message to those he left behind?”
Iacopo listened to his mother’s appeal, and a longing to comfort her rose up in him, like flames coaxed from a fire banked for the night. He could still hear Giovanni’s words in his head, and feel the power of his father’s arms about him. That power was his now.
“He spoke of his family.” Iacopo focused his gaze on the hem of his mother’s gown. The cloth was embroidered with an intricate border of leaves and flowers, but caked with dirt from the road. “He charged me to uphold the Medici name after he was gone.”
The hem of the dress undulated with Immacolata’s movement. “He called you his son, in those last hours of his life?”
“Why would he not?”
“Of course; you are his son. It seems Giovanni learned grace and mercy before he left this world, thanks to the Eternal God we all serve.”
Iacopo embraced his mother, breathing in the musky scent she wore,
as familiar to him as his own skin. Immacolata departed that afternoon for Firenze, leaving her son to the Medici business in Siena, whatever that might be.
* * *
After his mother had left, Iacopo donned a clean robe and round black biretta, and descended the creaking stairs to the great room of the tavern. He had no appetite, but thirst propelled him to seek a pitcher of wine. Iacopo ordered and sat, awaiting his drink. He scanned the room, though he did not expect to find anyone he would wish to speak with. He had made no acquaintances in his week here, but the tasks his father had set him would require some human interaction. His head ached dully and his mouth tasted bitter.
The wine was dark red with a faint scent of blackberries. As he sipped he noticed a group of men against the rear wall of the tavern, heads bent together over the clicking of dice. Iacopo had played a few times in his adolescent years, until his father found him at the game. Iacopo still recalled the sound of Giovanni’s voice in his ear:
“What amusements are you pursuing to spend my good money, Iacopo?”
“I thought you were at work, Father.”
“I see. So when I am at work, you feel free to go to the devil, taking my soldi with you?” Giovanni had beaten him so fiercely that day that he could barely stand, nor ride, for a week. It was then that his headaches had begun. He had not gambled since.
My father is dead and there is no one to stop me from joining the game now, he thought numbly. He rose and went to the gaming table. One player had a doughy face like an uncooked loaf, and greasy black curls tucked under a felt hat adorned with a bedraggled feather.
“Well, look at the fine gentleman come to watch our game. Friends, is he not pretty in his cap and robes? Perhaps he has some money to lose.” When the man smiled, Iacopo could see the gaps of missing teeth behind his fleshy lips.
The Scribe of Siena Page 16