Painting Mona Lisa aka I, Mona Lisa

I was lied to, told you were dead. But my heart never changed toward you.

A warning: Salvatore de’ Pazzi and Francesco del Giocondo plan to draw you and Piero here to kill you. They are amassing an army in Florence. They want to repeat-this time, with success-Messer Iacopo de’ Pazzi’s plan, to rally the people in the Piazza della Signoria against the Medici.

You must not come.

I paused. After the passage of so much time, how could he be sure of my handwriting? What could I say so that he could be certain of the letter’s authenticity?

I only ask, as I did before: Give me a place, in some other city, and a time. Either way, I am coming to you soon. You dare not communicate it by regular correspondence-your letter would be confiscated and read, and I and our child, your son, endangered.

I have been separated from you because of a monstrous falsehood. Now that I know the truth, I cannot tolerate the distance between us an instant longer than I must.

Your loving wife,

Lisa di Antonio Gherardini

When Zalumma returned, I handed her the folded parchment. “I cannot send this as correspondence,” I said. “The Council of Eight would intercept it, and have my head. I will have to buy someone willing to hide the correspondence on his person and ride all the way to Rome with it, and see it personally delivered.” I showed her the emerald and the earrings, and handed them to her.

“You are the only one I can trust,” I told her. I had thought I could trust Leonardo; now, I could not speak his name without venom. He had knowingly kept from me the one truth that would have healed my heart.

Giuliano… dead. Few people have heard this. Most believe he is still alive.

Do you not love him still?

He had been reticent on our first meeting because he thought I had married another man while my first husband still lived. He had thought me capable of complete betrayal-because he was capable of it himself.

Zalumma took the jewels and nestled them carefully in the pocket hidden in the folds of her gown. “If it is at all possible,” she said, “I will see it done.”

We agreed that she would go early in the morning to search for a trustworthy courier. The lie: I was so grief- stricken that she had gone to the apothecary’s in search of something to soothe my nerves. It was so early, and I so desperate, that I did not want to wait for the stablehand to wake and ready the horses, and so I sent her off on foot.

I was terrified to send her off on such a dangerous hunt; one thing especially worried me. “I did not bring my knife,” I said; if I had, I would have given it to her.

Her smile was small but wicked. “I did.”

I did not mourn that night. I lay in my mother’s bed, with Zalumma at my feet in the cot that my father had never been able to bring himself to remove, and did not sleep. Now that Antonio was dead, Francesco had no more use for me-except as a lure, a role I would not play. The time had come to escape; my ultimate destination was Rome. I considered a dozen different ways to try to make it past the city gates-but none were safe or feasible when a restless two-year-old boy was involved.

I resolved only one thing, that we three-Zalumma, Matteo, and I-would leave in the hours before dawn, after Francesco had returned from his revels, so that I could kill him as he lay drunk in his bed.

In the quiet of morning, when everyone was still asleep, the time came for Zalumma to go. I took her hands and kissed her cheek.

“You will see me again,” she promised, “no later than your father’s burial. If I am late, I will find you at the church.” She moved to the door, her step light; and then a thought stopped her and made her look back over her shoulder at me. “You forgave your father many things,” she said. “Too many. But perhaps I will try to forgive him, too.”

Once she was gone, I went into my father’s bedroom. He looked cold and unhappy in his white linen shift, with his hands folded around a little red cross. I took it from his grasp and hid it in the wardrobe, under a pile of tunics where Loretta would not find it; and when I did so, I came across a gold-handled stiletto-neat and deadly-and hid it in my belt.

The funeral was just after none, mid-afternoon, at Santo Spirito. Loretta had gone early to make the arrangements; since the plague was no longer widespread, it had been easier than she expected to hire gravediggers.

The Mass said for my father was short and sad. Francesco came and sat impatiently through the service, then left abruptly, saying there was an emergency at the Signoria. I was relieved; it had grown almost impossible to hide my infinite loathing for him.

Few stood at my father’s graveside: only Uncle Lauro, his wife and children, Loretta, my father’s stablehand, my father’s cook, and me. Matteo remained at home with the nursemaid. As I cast the first handful of earth onto my father’s coffin-nestled beside my mother’s sweet stone cherubs-I shed no tears.

Perhaps fear stole them from me: Zalumma had not returned. It had been a mistake, I told myself, to send her out alone with such expensive jewels, especially so early when the streets were empty. If she had encountered a thief, who would have heard her cries for help?

The time came to return to my father’s home for a funeral supper. Uncle Lauro and the others tried to coax me into walking back with them to my parents’ house, but I refused. I wanted a private moment with my father and mother; I wanted to remain in case Zalumma finally returned.

When the others left, I was alone only briefly. One of Santo Spirito’s Augustinian monks approached, in his order’s traditional habit, with a capuchin’s gathered folds around his shoulders and his cowl raised.

I kept my eyes focused on my father’s grave; I wanted no conversation. But he came to stand directly beside me and said, softly, “Madonna Lisa. I am so terribly sorry.”

The sound of his voice disgusted me. I turned my face away.

“You signaled with the book that you had found a letter,” he said, “but when you did not come I became concerned. I am saddened to learn that Antonio’s passing is the cause.”

“Go away.” My voice was ragged. “Go away and never come back.”

In the periphery of my vision, Leonardo bowed his head. “You are right to be angry: I could not save him, though you begged me to. But I could find no way. No way short of endangering you and Matteo. Perhaps when your grief eases, you will understand-”

“I understand that you are a liar, that you have been one from the beginning. You knew-” I tried to utter the words and choked; I wheeled on him. “Giuliano is alive. And you let me live in grief, in agony, all this time. Like a good spy, you used me without heart!”

He lifted his chin; he straightened. “I told you long ago that I could not tell you everything because it would endanger you. I have not used you. I care more for you than you know.”

“The hell you care! You look at me so you can moon over your dear lost Giuliano.”

He colored at that and had to compose himself. “How did you learn he was alive? From the letter, then?”

“And from my father, before he died.”

Inappropriately, with the familiarity of a husband, a brother, he seized my arm at the elbow. I resisted, but he would not let go. “Tell me, then, whom did you speak to of this? Does Francesco have any idea that you know Giuliano is alive?”

I tried to shake my arm free; he tightened his grip. “No,” I said. “I’m not that big a fool. Why didn’t you tell me? Why have you let me suffer all this time?”

“Look at you,” he said, with a sharpness and a coldness I had never heard in him. “You’re answering your own question. People kill and die because they cannot control their emotions. You did not know me very well, the first time we met at Santissima Annunziata. You had no reason to trust me. If I had told you Giuliano was alive, you would have written him immediately. Or you would have tried to go to Rome to find him. Nothing I might have said could have stopped you. And you, or he, or both of you, would have died as a result. If I ever told him that you