I, Mona Lisa (30 page)

The long silence afterward was piercing. The prophet had last told us the story of Noah, had last urged us to enter God’s Ark to find protection against the coming deluge. What would he say now?

Finally he opened his mouth, and cried, in a voice as heartrending as it was shrill:
“Ecce ego adducam aquas super terram.
Behold, I bring a flood of waters upon the Earth!”

Screams echoed through the vast sanctuary. In front of us, at our sides, men and women swooned and slid from their seats to the floor. Zalumma reached for my hand and squeezed it hard, hurting me, as if to shock me back to myself, as if to say,
Do not become caught up in this. Do not become part of this madness
.

To my right, my father and Pico began to weep—my father silently, Pico in great, wrenching sobs. They were not alone; soon the air was filled with wailing and piteous cries to God.

Even the prophet could no longer contain himself. He covered his homely face with his hands and wept, his body convulsed by grief.

Several moments passed before Fra Girolamo and his listeners were able to compose themselves; what he said afterward I do not recall. I only know that, for the first time, I considered that Florence as I knew it might disappear—and with it, Giuliano.

T
hat night, when I at last could sleep, I dreamed that I stood in the basilica of San Marco, near the altar where Cosimo was buried. The building was so crowded, the people so frenzied to hear the prophet, that bodies pressed, hot and sweating, against me—hard, harder, until I could scarcely draw a single breath.

In the midst of this desperate unpleasantness, I became aware that the great bulk leaning against my left side belonged to Fra Domenico. I tried to recoil with disgust and hatred, but faceless forms pushed against me, pinned my limbs, held me fast.

“Let him go!” I cried, without realizing I was going to cry out, nor understanding my own words until after they were uttered—for it was then that I caught sight of my Giuliano, slung over the portly monk’s wide back, his head hanging halfway to Domenico’s knees, his face hidden.

Overwhelmed by the crush of bodies, by terror, I shouted again at Fra Domenico: “Let him go!”

But the portly monk seemed deaf as well as mute. He stared straight ahead, toward the pulpit, while Giuliano—still suspended upside down, his hair hanging down, his cheeks flushed—turned his face toward me.

“It all repeats, Lisa, don’t you see?”He smiled reassuringly. “It all repeats.”

I woke, panicked, with Zalumma standing over me making clucking sounds. Apparently, I had cried out in my sleep.

From that moment on, I felt like Paul of Damascus: The scales had fallen from my eyes, and I could no longer pretend that I did not see. The situation with Giuliano and his family was highly precarious. Florence teetered on the precipice of change, and I could not wait for safer circumstances to present themselves. They might never come.

The instant dawn presented me with sufficient light, I wrote another letter, this one consisting of two sentences.

Give me a place and a time—or not, if you will not have me. Either way, I am coming to you soon
.

This time I would tell not even Zalumma what it said.

A week passed. My father, who delighted in telling me about Piero de’ Medici’s failures, had fresh news to relay: One of Charles’s envoys had arrived in our city, and had demanded of the Signoria that the French king be given free passage through Florence. He required an answer at once, as the King would soon be arriving.

The Signoria had none, as the members were obliged first to obtain Piero’s
si
or
no;
and Piero, still caught between conflicting advice, could not give an immediate reply.

The outraged envoy left—and within a day, all Florentine merchants were banished from France. Shops on the Via Maggio, which relied heavily on French business, shut down at once.

“People cannot feed their families,” my father said. Indeed, since his own business had suffered, we were obliged to live on more meager rations; we had long since given up meat. His workers—the shearers, the combers and carders, the spinners and dyers—were going hungry.

And it was all Piero de’ Medici’s fault. To prevent a rebellion, he
had doubled the number of guards who stood watch over the seat of the government, the Palazzo della Signoria, as well as those who protected his own house.

I listened patiently to my father’s railing; I heard the grumbling of the household servants and remained unmoved.

Even Zalumma looked pointedly at me and said, “It is not safe, these days, to be friends with the Medici.”

I did not care. My plan was in place, and the time to implement it would soon arrive.

N
ear October’s end, Piero—at last ignoring his advisors—rode north for three days, accompanied by only a few friends. His destination was the fortress of Sarzana, where King Charles camped with his army. Inspired by the late Lorenzo, who had once gone alone to King Ferrante and with his singular charm averted war with Naples, Piero hoped his brave gesture would similarly save Florence from Rapallo’s fate.

With Piero gone, the Signoria felt free to voice its opposition even more openly. Seven emissaries followed Piero north, with the idea of overtaking him and eyeing his every move. They had been instructed to tell King Charles that, no matter what Piero might say, Florence welcomed the French.

By the fourth of November, every citizen knew that Piero had, without coaxing, handed over the fortresses of Sarzana, Pietrasanta, and Sarzanella to Charles. My father was furious. “A hundred years!” he stormed, and struck the supper table with his fist, making the dishes clatter. “A hundred years it took us to conquer those lands, and he has lost them in a day!”

The Signoria was just as angry. At the same meal, I learned that the priors had decided to send a small group of envoys to Pisa, to meet
Charles there. Piero would not be among them—but Fra Girolamo Savonarola would.

Such news left me dizzy with anxiety, but my determination never wavered, nor did my plans change.

On the eighth of November, I set off alone in the carriage, leaving Zalumma behind on the agreed-upon pretext that she was unwell. My father, like all good Florentine men on a Saturday morning, had gone to the public baths.

The driver took me over the Arno on the ancient Ponte Vecchio. Some of the
botteghe
were closed because of the French embargo, but some shops still proudly displayed their wares despite the prospect of imminent invasion, and the bridge was crowded with riders on horseback, pedestrians, and carriages like mine.

At last we arrived at the market—not as crowded as it might have been, but still bustling, each of its four corners marked by a church. Brunelleschi’s orange brick dome hovered on the skyline near the tower of the Signoria’s palace. Milling about were housewives and their servants, men in need of a shave. I was dressed in my plain dark gown, the topaz at my throat. Hidden in my bodice, for luck, were the gold medallions. I bore the basket Zalumma always carried over her arm—although on this day, I had lined it with a cloth.

There were the barbers, with their gleaming razors and bowls of leeches, the apothecaries with their powders and ointments, the greengrocers singing their luscious wares, the baker with his bins of warm, fragrant bread . . .

And, in the distance, there was the butcher’s stall, with skinned hares and plucked chickens hanging overhead by their feet.

Never did a place so familiar seem so utterly strange.

Before departing, I had mentioned to the driver that I would be visiting the butcher’s today, even though we had not been there in some weeks. Bones for soup, I said.

I told him to wait for me by the greengrocers’ stalls. The driver pulled the horses to a stop and did not even watch as I climbed out and headed for the butcher’s—which just happened to be out of his line of sight.

It was such a simple matter, really—so swift, so easy, so terrifying. The butcher was a good man, a godly man, but times were hard and uncertain. He had his price, even if he suspected the source of the bag of gold florins.

As I neared, he was laughing with a young woman I had often encountered on market day, though we had never formally met. She was sweet-faced and blushing as she raised a hand to her mouth in an effort to hide a missing front tooth.

At the sight of me, the butcher’s smile faded; he quickly wrapped a thick red oxtail in a cloth. “
Buon appetito,
Monna Beatrice; may this meat keep your husband in fine form. God keep you!” He turned to the other woman waiting. “Monna Cecelia, forgive me, I have urgent business, but Raffaele will attend to you. . . .” As his son put down the cleaver and stepped forward to wait on the customer, the butcher said, far more loudly than needed, “Monna Lisa. I have in the back some excellent roasts from which you might choose. Come with me. . . .”

He led me behind a makeshift curtain, stained with brown hand-prints, to the back of the stall. Fortunately, the light was dim so I could not see the carcasses hung there, but I could hear the clucking of the caged chickens; the smell of blood and offal was so strong I covered my nose.

It was a short walk to the exit. In the sunlight, the warm flagstones were slick with blood draining from the stall; the hem of my skirts was soaked. But my dismay was short-lived, for only steps away waited another carriage—this one black and carefully devoid of any family crest announcing its owner. Even so, I recognized the driver—who smiled at me again in greeting.

Those few strides—given the gravity and significance they bore—seemed impossible, interminable; I was certain I would lose my balance and fall. Yet I made it to the carriage. The door opened and through magic, through miracle, I found myself inside, sitting next to Giuliano, the basket by my feet on the floor.

The driver called out to the horses. The wheels creaked and we began to rumble along at a good pace, away from the butcher, away from the waiting driver, away from my father and my home.

Giuliano was glorious, as unreal and perfect as a painting. He wore a bridegroom’s
farsetto
of crimson voided velvet embroidered with gold thread, with a large ruby pinned to his throat. He stared at me with wide-eyed amazement—me, with my plain hair and translucent black veil, with my drab brown dress, the hem sodden with blood—as if I were exotic and startling.

I spoke in a swift, breathless rush; my voice shook uncontrollably. “I have the dress, of course. I will send for my slave when the thing is done. She is packing my belongings now. . . .” All the while I was thinking:
Lisa, you are mad. Your father will come and put a stop to all this. Piero will return and throw you from the palazzo.

I might have prattled on out of sheer nerves, but he seized my hands and kissed me.

A novel sensation took hold of me, melting warmth in the area of my navel. The topaz, at last put to the test, faltered. I returned his kiss with equal fervor, and by the time we arrived at the palazzo, our hair and clothing were in disarray.

H
ad my life been like that of other girls, my marriage would have been arranged by a
sensale,
an intermediary, most likely Lorenzo himself. My father would have paid at least five thousand florins and had the amount recorded in the city ledger, else the union could not have taken place.

After the engagement was announced, my groom would have hosted a luncheon at which, before friends and family, he would have presented me with a ring.

On my wedding day, I would have worn a dazzling gown designed, as custom demanded, by Giuliano himself. Followed by my kinswomen on foot, I would have ridden a white horse across the Ponte Santa Trinità to the Via Larga and the home of the Medici. A garland of flowers would have been stretched across the street in front of my new home, which I would dare not cross until my future husband broke the chain.

From there, we would have gone to the church. After the ceremony, I would have returned on foot to my father’s house and slept alone. Only the next day, after a great feast, would the marriage be consummated.

But for me, there was no
sensale;
Lorenzo was dead, and I would
never know his opinion concerning the man most suited to me. There was only Giuliano’s determination and yearning, and mine.

As for the dowry, Lorenzo, not my father, had paid it long ago—although Giuliano, through his government connections, had the amount recorded as coming from Antonio di Gherardini. I had no doubt that when my father learned of the deception, he would have the amount stricken from the ledger.

My dress was of my own design, worn by me three years earlier to the Palazzo Medici: a gown with skirts of deep blue-green voided velvet, with a pattern of satin vines, and a bodice of the same with insets of pale green damask. I had grown since then, and Zalumma and I had made frantic alterations in secret, lengthening the skirt and sleeves, letting out the bodice to accommodate a woman’s body, not a girl’s.

I rode no white horse, was accompanied by no kinswoman—not even Zalumma, who would have known best how to soothe my nerves. A house servant of Giuliano’s named Laura, a kind woman perhaps two years my senior, helped me dress in an unoccupied bedchamber—beneath the portrait of a sour-faced young Clarice de’ Medici, dressed in an apron and drab gown that made me look grand in comparison. I insisted on keeping Lorenzo’s gold medallions next to my heart.

As the servant was pulling my
camicia
through my sleeves, and examining it so that either side was equally puffed, I stared up at Clarice’s intimidating image. “Were these her rooms?”

Laura glanced up, with a glimmer of knowing humor, at the portrait. “Yes, Madonna. They belong to Madonna Alfonsina now. She has been at Poggio a Caiano for several days. I suspect Ser Giuliano will not share news of you with her until she returns.”