I, Mona Lisa (49 page)

“He was wearing a penitent’s robes,” Leonardo answered shortly. “With a hood. I couldn’t see his face clearly.”

“But you must have seen part of it. My Giuliano said that you saw him. That his uncle died in your arms.”

“I . . . saw a part of it. But it happened more than fifteen years ago; I saw him only for an instant. You can’t expect me to remember.”

“But I can,” I said. “You remembered my face when you saw me only once, at the Palazzo Medici. You sketched it perfectly, from memory. And you told me exactly
how
to remember a face: Surely you used the same technique to remember this one. You carry your little notebook everywhere. I can’t believe you never sketched his face—at least the part of it you saw.”

Footsteps sounded in the corridor; I turned to see Salai standing in the doorway. “She cannot stay long. The clouds have grown black; a hard rain is coming.”

“Understood,” Leonardo said, and dismissed the lad with a nod.
He looked back at me and drew in a breath. “I must take my leave of you now.”

Unkindly, I said, “When you first met me here, you told me that Piero wanted to see me. And I wanted so badly to believe you that I didn’t notice you were lying. But now I see very clearly that you aren’t being truthful. You
have
sketched the penitent, haven’t you? You must have been looking for him for years. I have the right to see the face of the man who killed my father. Why won’t you show it to me?”

His expression grew stony; he waited for me to finish, then after a long moment asked, “Has it occurred to you, Madonna, that it might be better for you
not
to know certain things?”

I began to speak, then stopped myself.

“Giuliano was murdered a long time ago,” he said. “His brother Lorenzo is dead. The Medici have been banished from Florence. The assassin—if he still breathes—will certainly not live much longer. What good will it do to distract ourselves with finding one man? And what do you think we should do if we find him?”

Again, I had no answer.

“No noble cause would be served by revenge. We could only stir up old pain, old hatred. We are already trapped in circumstances born of distant mistakes. We must hope not to repeat them.”

“I still deserve to know,” I countered evenly. “And I don’t want to be lied to.”

He raised his chin sharply at that. “I will never lie to you. You can trust that. But I
will
, if I deem it best for you, hide the truth. I do not do so lightly. Do not forget, you are the mother of a Medici heir. That is an enormous burden. You and the boy must be protected. And I am sworn to do so, even if my heart did not already demand it.”

I stared at him. I was angry, frustrated; yet I trusted him as deeply as I trusted the man who had raised me as his daughter.

“You need to leave,” he said softly. “Your driver mustn’t become suspicious. And there is the rain.”

I nodded. I lifted the damp cloak from my chair and slipped it over my shoulders, then turned to him. “I don’t want to say good-bye on unpleasant terms.”

“There is no unpleasantness; there is only goodwill.” He nodded at the painting. “I will take it with me and work on it, if I am able. Perhaps you will have the chance to sit for me again.”

“I know I will.” I stepped forward and took his hand; his grip was warm, with the perfect degree of firmness. “Be safe. And well.”

“And you, Madonna Lisa. I know that these are difficult times for you. I can only promise that great happiness awaits you at their end.”

His tone carried conviction, but I took no comfort in it. My Giuliano was gone; happiness was, for me—as it had been for my mother—buried in the past.

Once again, Salai fastened a dark cloth over my eyes; once again, he stuffed bits of uncarded wool into my ears. With his guiding hand on my elbow, I walked slowly, unsteadily, down a short corridor, then paused as a large piece of wood—a door, I decided, or a large panel—was slid aside for me, rumbling, scraping against the stone floor.

We moved down a flight of stairs—I uncertainly, one hand worrying with my long skirts, my heavy overdress, the sweeping hem of the cloak. There came our usual pause as Salai waited for word from a lookout that the path was clear. The signal was given, and we trotted across smooth floors.

Then, for the first time, we hesitated—in a doorway, I am certain, for beyond, rain crashed down violently, only inches from my face. Errant darts, driven by the wind, grazed my cheeks. Thunder roiled so powerfully, the earth beneath my feet shuddered.

Beside me, Salai tensed, readying himself, and gripped my upper arm.
“Run,”
he commanded, and pulled me with him.

Blindly, I ran. And gasped as sheets of icy water pummeled me. The rain lashed down at a fierce diagonal under my hood, directly into my face; I angled it away and down, trying to shield it, but my blindfold quickly became soaked; the water stung my eyes. I put my free hand to them.

As I did, my shoe caught the soggy hem of my cloak. I lost my footing and fell, torn from Salai’s grasp, and came down hard on my
free elbow, my knees. I struggled to push myself up; my palm pressed against cold, slick flagstone. At the same time, I raised the back of my wrist and wiped my burning eyes.

The soaked blindfold slipped and fell away. I found myself staring up at Salai’s handsome young face, now stricken with panic.

Near us, the horse and wagon waited. And behind him stood the massive walls of a great monastery, one I recognized quite well. He reached for me, tried to restrain me, but it was too late: I turned my head and glanced through the gray downpour at the piazza in the distance behind me.

The graceful colonnades of the Ospedale degli Innocenti, the Foundling Hospital, looked back at me from the other side of the street. Farther down, so far to my left that he appeared no larger than a fly, my driver Claudio had sought refuge beneath a loggia.

Salai and I were on the northern side of the church; Claudio waited for me on the western side, which faced the piazza.

Each time I had met with Leonardo, I had been at Santissima Annunziata the entire while.

S
alai and I did not speak; the crashing downpour made communication impossible. He pulled me to my feet, pulled the cowl of the cloak back over my head, and we ran again, this time back into the shelter of the monastery. There, in the entry hall of what I presumed was a dormitory, we caught our breaths. My knees and left elbow ached and were no doubt badly bruised, but no real damage had been done.

Salai made no effort to replace my blindfold; indeed, he motioned for me to pull the wool from my ears. He stood so close that our bodies touched, and said, his lips close to my ear, “Now you have the power to betray us all. Wait here. No one should come. If someone does, don’t speak—I’ll think of something when I return.”

I waited. In a moment, Salai returned with a large cloth. He helped me out of the sodden black cloak, then watched as I dried myself off as best I could.

“Good,” he said, when I handed the cloth back to him. “I was worried as to how you would explain your . . . damp condition to your coachman.”

“You need not tell Leonardo,” I said. “About my knowing where we are.”

He snorted. “It’s not as if we had any hope of hiding it from him, Monna. He can smell a lie as surely as we can smell blood on a butcher. Besides, I’m tired of driving you through town. Come.”

He led me up a flight of stairs, through a maze of corridors, and down, until we arrived at the narthex leading to the main sanctuary. There he left me, without so much as a backward glance.

I walked out beneath the shelter of an overhang, and waved at the loggia where Claudio waited.

That night, after Matteo had at last fallen asleep in the nursery, Zalumma unlaced my sleeves. I was curious, in the mood to talk.

“Did you know Giuliano?” I asked. “Lorenzo’s brother?”

Her mood was already troubled; I had come home shaken, with my hair inexplicably wet. Like Leonardo, she had a nose for deceit. And when I asked about Giuliano, her mood darkened further.

“I didn’t know him well,” she said. “I met him, on a few occasions.” She glanced up and to her left, at the far-distant past, and her tone softened. “He was a striking man; the few images I have seen of him don’t really show it. He was very happy, very gentle, like a child in the very best sense. He was kind to people even when he didn’t need to be. Kind to me, a slave.”

“You liked him?”

She nodded, wistful, as she folded my sleeves and set them in the closet, then turned back to me and began unlacing my gown. “He loved your mother dearly. She would have been very happy with him.”

“There was a man. In the Duomo,” I said. “The day Giuliano was killed. Someone . . . someone saw it happen. It wasn’t just Baroncelli and Francesco de’ Pazzi. There was another man, a man wearing a hood, to cover his face. He struck the first blow.”

“There was another man?” She was aghast.

“Another man, who escaped. And he has never been found. He might still be here in Florence.” My gown dropped to the floor; I stepped from it.

She let go an angry noise. “Your mother loved Giuliano more than life. When he died, I thought she would . . .” She shook her head and gathered my gown into her arms.

Very softly, I said, “I think that . . . someone else, someone in Florence . . . knows who he is. And the time will come when
I
learn who he is. On that day, he will finally meet justice—at my hand, I hope.”

“What good will it do?” she demanded. “It’s too late. Giuliano’s life is gone, and your mother’s destroyed. She was going to him that night. Did you know? She was going to leave your father to go with him to Rome. . . . The night before he was murdered, she went to tell him so. . . .”

I went and sat in front of the fireplace to warm myself. I said nothing more to Zalumma that night. I thought of my mother’s ruined life as I stared into the flames, and promised myself silently that I would find a way to avenge her, and both our Giulianos.

Winter passed slowly. In Leonardo’s absence, I went to pray almost daily in the little chapel at Santissima Annunziata. I missed the artist: He had been my one link to my real father and my beloved Giuliano. I knew that, like me, he grieved over their loss.

Almost every evening, when the way was clear—that is, when Francesco was off whoring—I stole down to his study and searched his desk for letters. For several weeks, I found nothing. I fought off disappointment by reminding myself that Piero was coming. Piero was coming, at which point I would abandon Francesco and—with Matteo, my father, and Zalumma—seek refuge with the Medici.

But Piero did not come.

As wife of a high-ranking
piagnone
, I was obliged to continue attending Savonarola’s Saturday sermons for the women. I went with Zalumma to San Lorenzo and sat close to the high altar and the lectern, the place reserved for those with ties to the prophet. I endured the sermon by imagining myself going to Leonardo and commissioning
a beautiful monument for my Giuliano. But my attention was captured by Fra Girolamo’s ringing voice, filled with vitriol as he addressed his hushed congregation:

“Those lovers of Piero de’ Medici and his brothers, Giuliano and the so-called Cardinal Giovanni—”

Zalumma and I stared straight ahead; I dared not look at her. Pain and anger blinded me. I heard the prophet’s words, but I could not see his face.
Fool
, I thought.
You don’t know that Giuliano is dead
. . . .

“God knows who they are! God knows their hearts! I tell you, those who continue to love the Medici are just like them: the rich, the idolatrous, who worship pagan ideals of beauty, pagan art, pagan treasures. And all the while, as they glitter and gleam with their gold and jewels, the poor starve! God tells me this—I do not speak for myself:
Behold, those who worship such idolaters deserve to feel the bite of the executioner’s blade upon their necks. Like headless men they behave, without consideration of God’s law, without compassion for the poor. And so, they
shall
become headless, indeed!”

I remained silent, but inwardly I seethed as I remembered a line from the most recent letter discovered in Francesco’s study:

In fact, our prophet should now redouble his fervor, specifically against the Medici
.

I seethed. And I trembled. And I prayed to Piero to come.

I found only one letter in Francesco’s study at that time—again, in the same heavy-handed script.

Your fears of excommunication are unfounded. I told you before to have faith. Let him preach without fear! Do not hold him back. You will see. Pope Alexander will relent
.

One year faded into the next. On the very first day of 1496, Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, betrayed Florence.

One of the gems that King Charles of France had stolen from Florence, on his march south, was the fortress of Pisa. Pisa had always
been ruled by Florence, but had long yearned to be free. Since the invasion, the city was controlled by the French.

But Ludovico bribed the keeper of Pisa’s fortress to hand over the keys to the Pisans themselves. And with that single move, Pisa gained her freedom—from Charles and from Florence.

Ludovico, the crafty man, worked to keep his involvement secret. As a result, Florentines believed that King Charles had given the Pisans self-rule. Charles, hailed by Savonarola as God’s champion who would bring Florence great glory, had instead betrayed her.

And the people blamed Savonarola. For the first time, their praise turned to discontent.

It was Salai who—unable to restrain his enthusiasm—whispered the truth of it to me one day, as I left my prayers at the family chapel. I smiled. If this was the result of Leonardo’s work, then I could more cheerfully accept his absence.

Winter yielded to spring, which brought relentless rains. The lower-lying areas of the city flooded, damaging many workshops, including those of many dyers, which in turn delayed profits for Francesco’s silk and my father’s wool businesses.