we had in the carriage. We were man and wife now and approached each other with a sense of seriousness, of gravity. He settled me carefully on the bed and lay beside me to reach beneath my silk gown and run his palms slowly over my collarbone, my breast, my abdomen. I trembled, and not entirely from nerves.
Brazenly, I reached up and ran my hands over his velvet-covered shoulders, his muscular chest, and the hollow in its center. And then, wanting more, I fumbled, looking to free him from the
He half sat. “Here,” he said, and proffered me the high neck of his garment.
Without thinking, I clicked my tongue. “What makes you think I know how to unfasten a man’s garment?”
“You have a father…”
“And his servant dresses him, not I.”
He looked suddenly, charmingly, sheepish. “As mine does me.”
We both burst out laughing.
He glanced toward the door. “Oh no,” I said. “You’ve said I am headstrong: Let me prove it again.”
It was a hard-fought battle, but in the end, the
…
During my childhood, I had an experience of pure warmth, of opening, of unconditional union. I had been desperately sick, so sick that the adults surrounding me spoke in muted voices about my death. I remember a terrifying weight on my chest, the sensation of drowning in my own fluids, of not being able to breathe.
They brought up kettles and a wooden trough. They filled it with near-scalding water, and my mother lowered me into it.
Once I was immersed to my neck in the water, its steam settled tenderly on my face; its generous heat permeated my bones. I looked down at my reddening flesh and-thinking the way a child does-thought that it would melt, yield, and merge with the warmth. I closed my eyes, blissful, and felt my skin dissolve until there was nothing but my beating heart and the water. All weight, all heaviness, dispersed into the air.
I was alive. I could breathe.
Being with Giuliano was the same. There was heat; there was opening. There was union. I could breathe.
“Is Leonardo still going to paint my portrait?” I asked drowsily, after we had worn ourselves out. We were lying naked beneath fine linens and a crimson throw. By then, it was late afternoon and the light from the waning sun poured bittersweet through the shutters.
The naturalness of the deed had surprised me. I had expected to need careful instruction, had expected to fumble, but Giuliano’s confidence and my own instincts had guided me surely. After our exertion, I had grown chilled, and to my embarrassment, Giuliano had summoned a servant to build a fire in the hearth. I sat swaddled and still until the servant departed; only then could I be coaxed to forget myself and lie in Giuliano’s arms.
“Your portrait?” Giuliano let go a long, relaxed sigh. “Yes, of course. Father had asked for it. Leonardo is terrible about such things, you know. Most of the commissions Father paid him for, he never finished. But…” He directed a wicked little smile at me. “I shall demand it. I shall hold his feet to the fire. I shall chain him in his studio, and never let him free until it is done! But I must have your image with me forever.”
I giggled.
Giuliano took advantage of the levity to broach a difficult subject. “I have assigned one of our best agents to visit Ser Antonio.”
I tensed at once. “There is no reasoning with my father.”
Giuliano lightly touched the tip of my nose, as if trying to distract me from the hurt. “I know; I’ve met the man. He is far too distraught today to be approached; he’s been shocked and hurt. Give him time. My man will wait for a few days. Until then, we will watch your father to be sure he does nothing rash.”
Spies, I realized, with unease. Someone was going to sit outside my father’s house, watching him, and report his movements to Giuliano. At the same time that this disturbed me, it also brought relief. At least my father could not fling himself into the Arno without someone intervening.
“My man is elderly, a good Christian, and will treat Ser Antonio with a great deal of respect. I was unwise to think your father could be tempted to let you go for money or land; he is a man of character. While I don’t share his love for Fra Girolamo, I understand that he needs to be reassured that you have married an honorable, pious man, and that you will not live a life of corrupt luxury, but will instead devote yourself to God and your husband.
“And Lisa,” Giuliano said very earnestly, turning his face to mine; my head rested upon his shoulder and outstretched arm. “I believe in God and the need for integrity, and if your father requires that we go and listen to Fra Girolamo’s sermons, I will do it.”
His sincerity touched me, but I let go a snort at his last words. “Then you’ll go alone,” I murmured, though his words gave me hope. If Giuliano humbled himself to suffer through the preaching of the Medici’s mortal enemy, it would certainly impress my father… and all of Florence.
My gaze wandered to three painted panels that covered the entire wall opposite us. Earlier, my nerves had allowed me to notice only blurs of red, yellow, black: Now I realized they depicted a fierce battle in progress. A wickedly sharp lance impaled a rider through his chest, lifting him from his saddle; fallen men and horses lay dead and dying amid empty helmets and dropped shields. It was a dreadful, chaotic evocation of confusion and rage. I lifted my head from Giuliano’s shoulder and frowned.
“Ah,” Giuliano said, and smiled. “You’ve noticed the paintings. This is Uccello’s
“But it’s so violent… It must have been the first thing Lorenzo saw in the morning, and the last thing at night. Why would anyone want such a disturbing sight in his bedroom?”
Bright with enthusiasm, Giuliano rose naked from the bed and moved to the central panel. “Father liked it not for its violence, but for the spirit shown by the captain, Niccolo da Tolentino. He was a great hero. See? He’s in the center, leading the charge.” He pointed to a rider-the only one without a helmet-on the front lines, his lance aimed at the heart of his opponent. “He is unafraid. Despite the great army he faces, he is confident of success. And this is a great example of the new perspective. Look here”-with thumb and forefinger, he measured one of the fallen soldiers-“and see how the length of this man compares with that of the captain.”
I stared. The fallen man was a fraction of da Tolentino’s size. “He is so small!” I laughed. “But it only makes sense; if you face someone lying down, their body looks shorter than it is. And-look there. See how the men here are small, to make them look far away?”
Pleased, Giuliano smiled. “If you weren’t a woman, I’d say you should be an artist! I didn’t know you were so clever. Yes, that’s the magic of perspective. And Uccello was one of the very first to use it. Father had a wonderful eye. Piero and Giovanni haven’t a clue about the amazing art that surrounds them. It’s a shame, really.”
I shared Giuliano’s smile. “Ser Lorenzo must have loved you greatly to have taught you such things.” I thought of Lorenzo, sick and beset by enemies, taking courage from the image of the long-dead warrior.
Giuliano nodded, a bit more serious. “Of his family, I understood him best. And he understood me. Piero, he is more like Mother, and Giovanni-” He gave another short laugh. “I’m not sure who he resembles in the family. Perhaps our great-grandfather Cosimo. He is very shrewd at promoting himself.”
Dusk had brought its gloom; he lit a pair of candles using the fire in the hearth, then returned to the bed and settled beside me with a sigh of pleasant exhaustion.
“Why would the
His good humor fell away. He propped himself on his elbow and rolled toward me, his face in shadow. “I’m not sure exactly,” he said. “But I know they want our family’s downfall. Father did many unwise-even illegal-things. He stole from the city’s dowry fund to buy Giovanni’s cardinalship. And, in his younger years, he treated his enemies without mercy. He was willing to do anything to shield the family. There are many people, many families and groups, who had reason to hate him.
“But he had an uncanny knack for protecting himself, for making allies, for knowing-especially in his later years-when to yield, and ignore those who threatened him or spoke ill of him.” He paused. “Piero and Giovanni… they’re intelligent in their own ways, but they aren’t Father. They don’t understand the importance of how the public
