Painting Mona Lisa aka I, Mona Lisa

married Giocondo because you thought he was dead, he’d-”

“He’d have come to me, wouldn’t he? So you’ve lied to him, too. Why should I ever trust you now?” My face contorted; the tears that had been so long suppressed suddenly streamed unchecked down my cheeks. “Why should I tell you the contents of the letter? I’m warning him myself of the danger-”

“God,” he whispered, his face so slack with fear that I fell silent. “Lisa-swear to me you have not tried to contact him!”

“I’ll swear nothing.” My voice was ugly. “They mean to entice him here, and Piero, then kill them. They want to make it all repeat-rally the people against the Medici, as Messer Iacopo meant to do-and this time succeed. Do you think I am such a child that I would let Giuliano endanger himself? I told him not to come. I told him to stay.” I shook my arm. “Let go of me!”

He reached for me again; I took a step away, back toward the gravediggers. “Lisa… They will discover this. They will kill you.”

“They won’t find out. I’ve seen to it.”

In the distance, someone called my name. I turned, and saw Loretta, half running toward us.

“Lisa, please.” I had never heard such desperation in his voice. “You cannot go back with her-they will trap you, try to kill you, or use you against Giuliano. What must I do to convince you…? Everything I have ever done has been for your safety, and your child’s.” His eyes glittered; I realized, to my surprise, that they were filling with tears.

A brilliant performance, I told myself. Loretta was still too distant to hear us, but close enough for me to see panic on her face; he was forced to drop my arm, lest she see a monk behaving so suspiciously. “You’ll have to convince me quickly, because I am going home.” And I turned my back to him and took a step toward Loretta.

“Lisa, I love you,” he said quickly.

I glanced at him over my shoulder. “Not so much as you loved Giuliano,” I said nastily.

“More,” he said. “More, even, than I loved your mother.”

I slowed. I stopped. I looked up at him.

“Giuliano de’ Medici was not your father,” he said. “I am.”

“Madonna Lisa!” Loretta called. She was breathless, red-faced, at the gate of the churchyard. “Matteo is sick! He is sick; they think it is la moria! Claudio is here, waiting to drive you home!”

“Matteo is sick,” I said to him. He opened his mouth and reached for me again, but before he could touch me, before he could speak, I lifted my skirts and ran to meet Loretta.

I rushed into the front entry of our palazzo and would have run up the stairs, but my husband called out from the dining hall.

“Lisa! Come and meet our guest!”

Francesco emerged, wearing his typical benign smile, and took my arm. “Come,” he said, and drew me with him before I had time to protest.

A man sat at the middle of our long dining table; at the sight of me, he rose and bowed. He was a good head shorter than Francesco and twenty years younger. His short tunic, sharp goatee, and accent smacked of Rome. “Madonna Lisa, is it?”

“Sir,” I said, “you must forgive me. My son is very ill. I must go to him.”

Francesco’s little smile did not waver. “There is no hurry. Come sit with us.”

His placid expression was entirely out of place; I panicked. Had my child died, and was Francesco now going to attempt to soothe me? Was this stranger a physician, here to comfort me? “Where is Matteo?” I demanded.

“Safe,” he said, and that single, sharp word was double-edged.

He did not try to stop me as I fled up the stairs, stumbling over my skirts, frantic. When I threw the door to the nursery open, I saw the room was empty-neatly cleaned of Matteo’s things-and the nursemaid’s room was empty, as well. There were no linens on his little bed, in the crib.

I went back down the stairs, a madwoman. Francesco stopped me on the second level, on the landing in front of his chambers.

“Where is he?” I demanded, seething, trembling. “Where have you taken him?”

“We are all in the study,” he said calmly, and took my arm the instant before I reached for the knife.

I scanned the study: My baby was not there. Instead, our guest was sitting at the little round table in the center of the room, in front of the fireplace. Two men flanked him: Claudio and one of the soldiers who had guarded our palazzo immediately after Savonarola’s trial by fire.

The soldier held a knife to Zalumma’s throat.

“How can you do this?” I hissed at Francesco. “How can you do this to our son?”

He made a soft sound of disgust. “I have eyes. He is like his mother: of questionable heritage.” My cold Francesco.

He guided me to a chair across from our guest; I sank into it, my gaze fastened on Zalumma. Her face was stony, her stance unrepentant. I looked down. On the table in front of me was the letter to Giuliano, unfolded and open so that it could be easily read. Beside it rested a quill and inkpot, and a fresh piece of parchment.

Francesco stood beside me and rested his hand on my shoulder. “There is a problem with this letter. It needs to be rewritten.”

I balked. I looked at Zalumma’s eyes: They were unfathomable black mirrors. Our esteemed guest nodded faintly at the soldier, and he pressed the tip of the knife against her white throat until she gasped. A dark trickle escaped the flesh there and collected in the hollow at the base of her neck. She looked away; she did not want me to see her face and how frightened she was, to see that she knew she was going to die.

“Don’t,” I said. “I will write whatever you want.” I sized up the soldier, Claudio, and the goateed man, all on the other side of the table; I glanced at Francesco, standing beside me. If I reached for the stiletto hidden in my belt, I would be stopped before I ever got around the table, and Zalumma would be killed.

Francesco made a gracious gesture to the goateed man. “Ser Salvatore,” he said. “Please.”

Salvatore put his elbows on the table and leaned forward on them, toward me. “Copy the first two lines,” he said. “The letter must sound as if you wrote it.”

I dipped the quill in the pot, and scratched out the words:

My love, my love,

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

“Very good,” Salvatore said, then dictated the next lines.

Your son and I are in mortal danger; we are captured by your enemies. If you and your brother Piero do not appear at Santa Maria del Fiore for High Mass on the twenty-fourth of May, they will kill us. Send troops, or anyone else in your place, and we will die.

Your loving wife,

Lisa di Antonio Gherardini

“Giocondo,” he had said, but I stubbornly would not add it.

Francesco folded the letter and handed it to Claudio, who pocketed it. “Now,” my supposed husband said, turning to me. “Let’s talk about your spying.”

“I didn’t mean to spy,” I said. “I was curious, and read just the one letter…”

“Curious. That’s not what Isabella says. She says that you leave a book on your night table as a signal, for her to tell a certain Giancarlo that you will be going to pray the next day.”

Salvatore’s tone was casual, almost friendly. “Who do you meet at Santissima Annunziata, Lisa?”

“Just Giancarlo,” I answered quickly. “I go to tell him what the letter says.”

“She’s lying.” Francesco’s tone was brutal; he had used it before, when he had uttered the word whore.

Salvatore was very, very still. “I think your husband is right, Madonna Lisa. And I think that he is right when he says that you are very fond of your slave. She was your mother’s, yes?”

I stared down at the table. “I go to meet a spy,” I said. “An older man, with gray hair. I don’t know his name. I found Giancarlo in your study one night, with the letter, and I was curious. I read it.”