Painting Mona Lisa aka I, Mona Lisa

Giuliano in turn studied me, and his radiance stole my breath.

“Lisa,” my father called. For one giddy instant, I thought he might invite me in, but he said, “Go to your chambers.”

I moved numbly up the stairs. Behind me, Zalumma’s voice inquired whether Ser Antonio wanted more wine. She would serve as my eyes and ears, but this comforted me little. I went to my room but could not rest, so I ventured out into the corridor. I could not hear what was happening below me-the voices were too soft to distinguish-and so, helpless, I stared out the window at the driver and the fine horses.

The quiet voices were a good omen, I told myself. Giuliano, a gifted diplomat, had found a way to reason with my father.

I suffered for several minutes before I at last saw Giuliano emerge from our loggia and cross the courtyard toward his carriage.

I flung open the window and cried out his name.

He turned and looked up at me. The distance was enough to hinder speech, but I learned all I needed in a glimpse.

He was downcast. Yet he raised a hand in the air as if reaching for me; and he took that hand and pressed the palm against his heart.

I did an outrageous thing, an unspeakable thing: I lifted my skirts high and ran down the stairs at breakneck speed, determined to stop Giuliano in his carriage, to join him, to ride away from the house where I was born.

I might have made it-but my father had just stepped outside of the chamber where he had entertained his guest and, realizing where I was headed, stepped in front of the door and barred my path.

I raised both hands to strike him-or perhaps just to push him out of the way. He seized my wrists.

“Lisa, are you mad?” He was honestly amazed.

“Let me go!” I shouted, my tone anguished, for I could hear Giuliano’s carriage already rumbling toward the gate.

“How do you know?” His tone turned from one of amazement to one of accusation. “How do you know why he came? What made you think this was anything other than business? And how did you come to be so infatuated with him? You have been lying to me, hiding things from me! Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?”

“How could you turn him away, seeing how we love each other so? You loved Mother-how would you have felt if you had been refused her? If her father had turned you away? You care nothing for my happiness!”

Instead of raising his voice to match mine, he lowered his. “To the contrary,” he said. “I care everything for your happiness-which is why I turned him away.” Then in an impatient burst, he demanded, “Do you not hear the discontent in the streets? The Medici have attracted God’s wrath and that of the people. For me to give my daughter over to them would be to put her directly in harm’s way. It is only a matter of time before the French king comes, bearing the scourge of God in his hand; what then will become of Piero and his brothers? You attend Mass twice daily with me. How is it you have not heard all that Savonarola has said?”

“Fra Girolamo knows nothing,” I replied heatedly. “Giuliano is a good man, from a family of good men, and I will marry him someday!”

He reached forth to slap me so swiftly that I never saw the gesture; in the next instant, I was holding my hand to my stinging cheek.

“God forgive me,” he said, as surprised as I by his action. “God forgive me, but you provoke me. How can you speak of marrying one of the Medici? Have you not heard what the prophet has said of them? Have you not heard the people’s talk?”

“I’ve heard.” My tone was ugly. “I don’t care what you, or Fra Girolamo, or the people think.”

“You terrify me.” He shook his head. “I am frightened for your sake. Frightened for you. How many times must I repeat myself? You are following a dangerous path, Lisa. Safety lies only with Fra Girolamo. Safety lies with the Church.” He drew in a shuddering sigh, his expression tortured. “I will pray for you, child. What else can I do?”

“Pray for us both,” I countered, as unkindly as possible, then turned imperiously and ran up the stairs to my chamber.

XXXVII

Zalumma had not managed to hear all of the conversation between my father and Giuliano, but she heard enough to know that an offer of land and ten thousand florins had been refused. When Giuliano finally asked what offer would be acceptable, and what he could possibly do to prove the sincerity of his intent, my father had finally replied, “You know, Ser Giuliano, that I am a disciple of Fra Girolamo.”

“Yes,” Giuliano admitted.

“Then you understand my reasons for refusing you, and why I will never yield on this subject.” Then my father had risen and proclaimed the discussion at an end.

“But,” Zalumma confided in me, “I saw Ser Giuliano’s eyes, and the set of his jaw. He is just like his uncle; he will never give up. Never.”

During that spring and summer, I refused to abandon hope. I was convinced I would hear from Giuliano again.

Indeed, when Piero’s third cousins, eager for recompense from France, concocted a plot against him, I told myself that this was the worst that could possibly happen. And when Piero-avoiding his father’s mistake with the Pazzi-put the conspirators under house arrest, in a generous gesture designed to quiet his detractors, I felt great relief. A crisis had been averted; surely the people would quit criticizing Piero’s every move.

But Florence was cruelly fickle. She had, after all, exiled both Petrarch and Dante, those whom she now hailed as her greatest sons. Piero was deemed weak, ineffective.

With my father and Count Pico-who was growing wan and sickly-I listened to Savonarola’s Easter sermon. He had delivered the Lord’s message as best he could, he said, and this sermon was the last he would deliver until God summoned him to the pulpit again. It took all my resolve not to smile with relief.

Let everyone hurry to enter the refuge of God’s Ark, he said. “Noah invites you today; the door stands open, but the time will come when it shall close, and many will regret not having entered.”

I had no intention of either entering or entertaining regret. Indeed, I was jubilant to be spared Fra Girolamo’s frantic proclamations. I still attended Mass twice daily-accompanied by Zalumma and my father but, blessedly, not by the unctuous Pico-at the church of Santo Spirito, where my mother was buried, where her memory gave me peace, where God was a just and loving deity, more interested in rescuing souls and comforting the sick than in tormenting sinners.

I needed no God to provide torment; my own heart provided it easily. One evening after supper, in the privacy of my chamber, I penned a single line with my mother’s quill. After signing it, I carefully folded the paper twice and sealed it with red wax.

I proffered it then to Zalumma.

She stood with arms folded over her breast. She looked formidable with her curling black hair brushed out, creating a voluminous, unruly frame for her face, which in the candle’s glow had taken on the color of the moon. “It is no longer so easy,” she said. “Your father watches me closely.”

“Then someone else can go to the Palazzo Medici. I don’t care how you do it; just get it done.”

“First you must tell me what it says.”

Had it been anyone other than Zalumma, who had cared so attentively for my mother in her illness and stood beside me at her death, I would have reminded her at once that she was exhibiting dangerous impertinence for a slave. I sighed, dropped my shoulders in surrender, then uttered the words that had stolen my sleep for so many nights.

“Give me a sign and an opportunity, and I will come to you.”

This was monstrous, beyond scandal; a proper marriage could never be obtained without the father’s consent. I risked disapproval not only from society but from Giuliano himself.

I sat and waited wearily for Zalumma’s tirade.

It did not come. She studied me for a long, silent moment. And then she said, softly but most deliberately: “I