I, Mona Lisa (55 page)

My father was shaking his head. “They will have to stand for it. The appearance of Lamberto dell’Antello has filled every
piagnone
’s heart with fear. After the food riots in the Piazza del Grano, the Signoria is desperate to stifle any more cries of
‘palle, palle.’
”

“But when Piero was ousted,” I said, “Savonarola called for mercy for all the friends of the Medici. He insisted that everyone be forgiven and pardoned.”

My father looked out across the garden, down the cobblestone path lined with blooming rosebushes and sculpted boxwoods, at his
grandson, currently distracted by an unfortunate beetle. The sight should have gladdened him; instead, his eyes grew haunted.

“There will be no mercy now,” he said, with the conviction of a man who held secrets. “And no hope. There will only be blood.”

I wanted desperately to go to Santissima Annunziata, to warn Leonardo of the imminent peril to Bernardo del Nero and his political party, but Francesco would not hear of me leaving the house to pray—especially when it meant going to the family chapel, which stood across from the Ospedale degli Innocenti, where many of the sick were housed. And no amount of arguing could convince Claudio to disobey his master’s orders.

So I remained housebound. Francesco’s letters had all spoken of the
Bigi
as enemies who must be contained; now it was clear that they must be destroyed. I trusted Leonardo knew more about the danger than I did.

In the meantime, I stole onto my balcony alone and unsheathed my knife. My opponent was no longer the third man, the murderer of my true father. He was Francesco; he was the writer of the letters—the murderers of
my
beloved Giuliano. Night after night, I wielded my blade. Night after night, I killed them both, and took comfort in it.

Arrests were made; the accused were tortured. In the end, five men were held and brought before the Signoria and the Great Council for sentencing: the august Bernardo del Nero; Lorenzo Tornabuoni, Piero’s young cousin, who, though titular head of the
Bigi
, was nonetheless a much-loved citizen and a pious
piagnone;
Niccolò Ridolfi, an older man whose son had married Lorenzo’s daughter Contessina; Giannozzo Pucci, a young friend of Piero’s; and Giovanni Cambi, who had had many business dealings with the Medici.

Pity!
supporters cried, certain that the sentences would be light and, in the case of Bernardo del Nero, commuted. The accused were all admired,
upright citizens; their confessions—that they were actively involved in arranging for Piero de’ Medici’s return as the city’s self-proclaimed ruler—had been elicited under the most brutal torture.

The people looked to Savonarola for guidance. Surely the friar would once again call for forgiveness, forbearance.

But Fra Girolamo was too distracted by his efforts to placate an angry Pope. He could no longer be bothered, he said publicly, with political matters. “Let them all die or be expelled. It makes no difference to me.”

His words were repeated thousands of times by followers whose eyes were troubled, whose voices were hushed.

Three hours before dawn on the morning of the twenty-seventh of August, Zalumma and I were startled from slumber by pounding on my chamber door. Zalumma rolled out of her cot and opened the door to find Isabella, disheveled and squinting in the light shed by the taper in her hand. Still bewildered by sleep, I moved into the doorway and stared at her.

“Your husband summons you,” she said. “He says, ‘Dress quickly, for a somber occasion, and come downstairs.’”

I frowned and rubbed my eyes. “And Zalumma?” I could hear her behind me, fumbling for the flint to light the lamp.

“Only you are to come.”

As Zalumma laced me into a modest gown of gray silk embroidered with black thread, I began to worry. What possible “somber occasion” required that I be wakened in the middle of the night? Perhaps someone had died; I thought at once of my father. Savonarola’s excommunication left him in his masters’ bad graces. Had they decided at last to be rid of him?

The air was heavy, warm, and still; I had slept fitfully because of the heat. By the time I was fully dressed, my breasts and armpits were damp.

I left Zalumma and went down the stairs, stopping one level below
to visit the guest chambers, where my father now slept. At the closed door, I paused—but my desperation overcame all notions of courtesy. I opened the door just long enough to peer past the antechamber into the bedroom and confirm that my father lay sleeping within.

I closed the door quietly, gratefully, and went downstairs to Francesco.

He was pacing by the front entrance, fully alert and restless. I could not have described him as happy, but in his expression and eyes I saw nervous triumph, a dark joy. It was then I realized that we were waiting for Claudio, that something so important was happening that Francesco was willing to risk exposing himself and his wife to plague.

“Has someone died?” I asked, with a good wife’s gentle concern.

“There is no point in discussing it with you now; you will only become agitated, as women do about such matters. You will see soon enough where we are going. I ask only that you contain yourself, that you exert as much bravery as you are able. I ask that you make me proud.”

I looked at him with dawning fear. “I will do my best.”

He gave a grim little smile and escorted me out to the carriage, where Claudio and the horses waited. The air outside was stifling, without hint of coolness. We did not speak during the ride. I stared out at the dark streets, my dread increasing as we rolled east toward the Duomo, then relentlessly south.

We pulled into the Piazza della Signoria. In the windows of the Palace of the Lord Priors, every lamp burned—but this was not our destination. We rumbled to a stop in front of the adjoining building: the Bargello, the prison where I had been held, where Leonardo had been taken by the Officers of the Night. It was a forbidding square fortress crowned by jagged battlements. Great torches burned on either side of the massive entry doors.

As Claudio opened the door, my heart quailed.
They have captured Leonardo
, I thought.
Francesco knows everything. He has brought me here to be questioned
. . . . But I showed no outward sign of my turmoil. My face was set as I took Claudio’s arm and stepped lightly
onto the flagstone. I thought fleetingly of Zalumma’s knife, at home beneath my mattress.

Francesco stepped from the carriage after me and gripped my elbow. As he directed me toward the doors, I saw wagons waiting nearby—five of them, in a cluster, attended by small groups of grim black-clad men. A keening sound made me turn my head and look at them more closely: A woman, veiled in black, sat atop a wagon, sobbing so violently that she would have fallen had the driver not clutched her.

We made our way inside. I expected to be led to a cell, or to a room filled with accusatory priors. Armed guards scrutinized us as we passed through the entry hall, then outside into a large courtyard. In each of the four corners stood a large pillar, of the same dull brown stone as the building; on each of these pillars were affixed black iron rings, and in each ring burned a torch, which cast wavering orange light.

Against the far wall was a steep staircase leading down from a balcony, and at the foot of those stairs stood a broad, recently constructed platform. Mounds of straw had been scattered on its surface. Beneath the smells of fresh wood and straw was a faint, fetid undercurrent of human waste.

Francesco and I were not alone. There were other high-ranking
piagnoni
present: seven sweating Lord Priors in their scarlet tunics, a handful of
Buonomi
, and members of the Council of Eight. Most prominent was the gonfaloniere Francesco Valori, who was serving for the third time in that capacity; a hard-eyed, gaunt man with streaming silver hair, Valori had stridently called for the blood of the accused
Bigi
. He had brought his young wife, a pretty creature with golden ringlets. We nodded silent greetings, then joined the crowd waiting in front of the low platform. I let go a shuddering breath; I was here as a witness, not a prisoner—at least for now.

People had been murmuring to one another, but they fell silent as a man mounted the scaffold: an executioner bearing a heavy singleedged axe. With him came another man, who set down a scarred wooden chopping block upon the straw.

“No,”
I whispered to myself. I remembered my father’s words
about the
Bigi;
I had not wanted to believe them. If I had found a way to see Leonardo, could I have prevented this?

Francesco inclined his head toward mine, to indicate that he had not heard me, that I should repeat myself, but I said nothing more. Like the others, I stared at the scaffold, the executioner, the straw.

The clink of the chains came first; then the accused appeared on the balcony, flanked by men wearing long swords at their hips.

Bernardo del Nero was first. He had always been a dignified white-haired man, with large, solemn eyes and a straight, prominent nose. Those eyes were now puffed almost entirely shut; his nose, twisted and crusted with black blood, was enormously swollen. He could no longer stand straight, but leaned heavily on his captor as he took each halting step down. Like his fellows, he had been forced to surrender his shoes and meet death barefoot.

I did not recognize young Lorenzo Tornabuoni; the bridge of his nose had been crushed, and his face was so bruised and swollen he could not see at all, but had to be led down the stairs. Three other prisoners followed: Niccolò Ridolfi, Giannozzo Pucci, Giovanni Cambi, all of them broken, resigned. None of them seemed aware of the assembly gathered to watch them.

When they at last stood upon the scaffold, the gonfaloniere read the charges and the sentence: espionage and treason, death by beheading.

Bernardo del Nero was granted the mercy of dying first. The executioner asked his forgiveness, and was told, in a frail, thick-tongued voice, that he was forgiven. And then Bernardo squinted out at our small assembly and said, “May God forgive you, too.”

He was too weak to kneel without aid; a guard helped him settle his chin properly into the chopping block’s darkly stained cradle. “Strike neatly,” he urged, as the executioner lifted the axe.

I did not care if I made Francesco proud; I averted my face, closed my eyes. But I opened them again immediately, startled by the warm spray and the collective gasp of the crowd. I caught a sidewise glimpse of Bernardo’s kneeling body falling to one side, of blood spurting in a thick upward arc from its headless neck, of a guard moving forward to retrieve something red and round from the straw.

And suddenly I remembered. Remembered a day years before, in the church at San Marco, when my mother, her gaze fixed and terrible, had stared up at Savonarola in the pulpit. And she had cried out:

Flames shall consume him until his limbs drop, one by one, into Hell! Five headless men shall cast him down!

Five headless men.

I stepped backward, treading on the slippered foot of a Lord Prior. Francesco caught my arm and held me steady. “Nerves,” he whispered to the offended man. “Forgive her; it is only nerves. She is young and unused to such things; she will be fine.”

Guards came and took the corpse away; Tornabuoni was pushed forward, forced to murmur words of forgiveness, to kneel, to die. Two more followed. Giovanni Cambi was last. He collapsed from fear and had to be dragged to the block; he died screaming.

In the end, the straw was sodden. The smell of fresh wood was eclipsed by the tang of blood and iron.

By the time Francesco and I rode home, the darkness had not yet begun to ease. We sat in silence until Francesco abruptly spoke.

“This is what becomes of Medici supporters.” He was watching me curiously. “This is what becomes of spies.”

Perhaps my pallor seemed suspicious; perhaps he spoke simply out of a desire to relish his political victory. In any case, I did not answer. I was thinking of my mother’s words. And I was thinking of my father, and what would happen to him when the prophet was cast down.

A
s the weather cooled, the plague’s grip on the city eased. My father returned to his house, Francesco took up with his prostitutes again, and I went to the marketplace and church as often as I could. One morning I placed the book on my night table, even though I had found no new letter in Francesco’s desk, and the next I day went to Santissima Annunziata.

Leonardo was well, to my relief. He had even worked on the painting. The bold outlines and shadows of my features had been softened by the application of light
cinabrese
, a translucent curtain of flesh. I was beginning to look human.

But when I told him of my father’s warning that the
Bigi
would pay with their blood—of my anguish that I had not been able to come and warn him—he said, “You bear no guilt. We knew of the danger, well before your father spoke of it to you. If there is any fault, it is mine. I was unable—I could not—bring influence to bear in time. And the horror of it was, even had we been able to arrange a rescue . . .” He could not bring himself to continue.

“Even if they could have been rescued—they should not have been,” I finished.

“Yes,” he murmured. “That is the horror of it. It is better that they
have died.” It was true; the executions had outraged everyone in Florence, even most of the
piagnoni
, who felt that the friar should have extended the same forgiveness he had freely dispensed in those days shortly after Piero was banished. Isabella, Elena, even the devout Agrippina, who had never dared risk my husband’s disapproval, now criticized Fra Girolamo openly.

“My mother said—” I began, and stopped, confused as to how to express my thought without sounding insane. “Years ago, my mother told me . . . that Savonarola would be brought down. By five headless men.”