Painting Mona Lisa aka I, Mona Lisa

innocent children! How can he say such horrid things?”

Just as my mother had clutched my arm protectively, so Zalumma quickly took my mother’s. “Hush, Madonna. You must calm yourself…” She leaned closer to whisper directly into my mother’s ear. My mother gave an indignant shake of her head and wound her arm about my shoulders. She pressed me tightly to her side as though I were a small child. Zalumma ignored the preacher and his piagnoni and kept her keen gaze focused on her mistress. I, too, grew worried; I could feel the rapid rise and fall of my mother’s bosom, feel the tension in her grip.

“This is not right,” she whispered hoarsely. “This is not right…”

So many in the church were crying and moaning, murmuring to Fra Girolamo and God, that not even my father noticed her; he and Pico were far too captivated by the preacher.

“Oh Lord!” Fra Girolamo cried sharply. The monk pressed his forehead to his folded hands; he released a bitter sob, then raised his tear-streaked face toward Heaven. “Lord, I am only a humble monk. I have not asked for Your visitation; I do not crave to speak for You, or to receive visions. Yet I humbly submit to Your will. In Your name, I am willing, as Jeremiah was, to endure the sufferings inflicted by the unholy on Your prophets.”

He gazed down at us, his eyes and voice suddenly tender. “I weep… I weep as you do, for the children. I weep for Florence, and the scourge that awaits her. Yet how long can we sin? How long offend God, before He is compelled to unleash His righteous wrath? Like a loving father, He has stayed His hand. But when His children continue to err grievously, when they mock Him, He must, for their good, mete out harsh punishment.

“Look at you women: you, with sparkling jewels hanging heavy round your necks, from your ears. If one of you-only one of you-repented of the sin of vanity, how many of the poor might be fed? Look at the swaths of silk, of brocade, of velvet, of priceless gold thread that adorn your earthly bodies. If but one of you dressed plainly to please God, how many would be saved from starvation?

“And you men, with your whoring, your sodomy, your gluttony and drunkenness: Were you to turn instead to the arms of your wife alone, the Kingdom of God would have more children. Were you to give half your plate to the poor, none in Florence would go hungry; were you to forswear wine, there would be no brawling, no bloodshed in the city.

“You wealthy, you lovers of art, you collectors of vain things: How you offend, with your glorification of man instead of the Divine, with your vile and useless displays of wealth, while others die for want of bread and warmth! Cast off your earthly riches and look instead for that treasure which is eternal.

“Almighty God! Turn our hearts from sin toward You. Spare us the torment that is surely coming to those who flout Your laws.”

I looked to my mother. She was staring with a gaze fixed and furious, not at Savonarola but at a point far beyond him, beyond the stone walls of San Marco.

“Mother,” I said, but she could not hear me. I tried to slip from her embrace, but her grip only tightened until I yelped. She had turned stone rigid, with me caught in her grasp. Zalumma recognized the signs at once and was speaking gently, rapidly to her, urging her to free me, to lie down here, to know that all would be well.

“This is the judgment from God!” my mother shouted, with such force that I struggled in vain to lift my hands to my ears.

Fra Girolamo heard. The congregation near us heard. They looked to my mother and me, expectant. My father and Pico regarded us with pure horror.

Zalumma put her arms about my mother’s shoulders and tried to bring her down, but she was planted firm as rock. Her voice deepened and changed timbre until I no longer knew it.

“Hear me!” Her words rang with such authority that it silenced the whimpering. “Flames shall consume him until his limbs drop, one by one, into Hell! Five headless men shall cast him down!”

XVII

My mother fell heavily against me. I crumpled beneath her, colliding with my father as I did. I snatched a fleeting impression of Pico pulling him back before I reached the cold, unforgiving marble. I landed on my side, simultaneously striking my head, my shoulder, and my hip.

There came flashes of green velvet and white ermine, the hems of women’s skirts and the boots of men. I heard whispers, exclamations, and Zalumma’s shouts.

My mother lay atop me, her side pressed to mine. Her limbs thrashed; her elbow spasmed and dug into my ribs. At the same time, my mother’s teeth champed; the air released each time she opened her mouth whistled in my ear. The sound terrified me. I should have been holding her head, making sure she did not bite her tongue or otherwise harm herself.

Zalumma’s loud commands suddenly became intelligible. “Grab her arms! Pull her out!”

Strong hands seized my wrists, lifted my arms above my head. I was rolled onto my back. My mother’s head fell onto my breast; her teeth whistled through the air, then snapped fiercely together. All the while, her arms and legs pummeled me; her hand swiped beneath my chin, and drew away a piece of flesh beneath her fingernail.

Near my feet, invisible, Zalumma bellowed: “Pull her out!”

My father at once came to himself. With uncanny force, he clasped my upraised arms and dragged me out from under my mother’s writhing body. The movement caused an excruciating surge of pain in my ribs.

But the instant I was free, it was forgotten. I did not acknowledge my father’s aid; instead, I clambered to my knees and turned toward my struggling mother. Zalumma had already crawled forward and used her body to weigh down her mistress’s kicking legs.

I found the furred edge of my mother’s cape and jammed it between her gnashing teeth. My intervention came late: She had bitten through her tongue, with frightening result. Blood stained her lips and teeth, cheek and chin; the white ermine round her face was spattered with crimson. Though I held her head fast, it jerked so violently in my hands that her cap fell back beneath her. My fingers soon were interlaced in her soft dark hair; the careful coils arranged earlier that morning by Zalumma frayed into tangles.

“It is the Devil!” A man stepped forward-young, red-haired, with pockmarked skin; I recognized him as the priest from Santa Maria del Fiore. “I saw her do this before, in the Duomo. She is possessed; the evil inside her cannot bear to stand upright in the house of God.”

Murmurs surrounded us and increased to a rumble until, above us, Savonarola cried out, “Silence!”

All looked to him. His eyebrows were knit in a thunderous scowl of indignation at such an offensive display. The red-haired priest stepped back and disappeared into the crowd; the others, silent and docile, went rustling back to their places.

“The Evil One desires nothing more than to interrupt the word of the Lord,” Fra Girolamo intoned. “We must not let ourselves be distracted. God will prevail.”

He would have said more, but my father moved toward the pulpit. His gaze fastened on the monk, he gestured with his arm toward his afflicted wife and called desperately, plaintively, “Fra Girolamo, help her! Heal her now!”

I still held my mother’s head, but like the others, I watched San Marco’s prior closely, breathlessly.

His frown eased; his eyes flickered briefly with uncertainty before his sense of complete authority returned. “God will help her, not I. The sermon will continue; Mass will be celebrated.” As my father bowed his head, downcast, Fra Girolamo signaled to Count Pico and two Dominican monks in the congregation. “Attend to her,” he told them softly. “Take her to the sacristy to await me.”

Then in a loud voice, he began again to preach. “Children of God! Such evil portents will only increase, until all in our city repent and turn their hearts to the Lord; otherwise, a scourge will come, such as the Earth has never seen…”

From that moment, I heard the cadence and pitch of his sermon, but not the sense of it, for two brown-robed monks had appeared at my mother’s side. Pico took charge.

“Fra Domenico,” he said, to the larger one, who possessed a great square head and a dullard’s eyes. “I will have the women move away. Then you lift Madonna Lucrezia”-he gestured at my mother, still in the throes of her