Painting Mona Lisa aka I, Mona Lisa

slept, deaf to the chimes outside his window.

I slipped quietly from the bed and retrieved my silvery camicia, this time folded and placed carefully on a chair. I shivered as I donned it. The fire had subsided into warm ash. Careful not to wake Giuliano, I lifted a fur throw from the bed and wrapped it around me.

I opened the door leading to the antechamber, thinking to go out into the corridor beyond to call for a servant; a rush of warmth greeted me. A healthy blaze crackled in the hearth, and just outside the door, sprawled in a chair, sat a man of about thirty years. He was the tallest man I had ever seen-almost a giant, muscular and thick of bone. A sheathed sword, its hilt gleaming with orange light, hung on his hip. A large leather shield lay propped against the wall beside him.

His massive hands held a compact book, open at its center, and as I opened the door he snapped it shut guiltily. Like most merchant’s daughters in Florence, I knew my letters well enough to recognize Dante’s Paradiso. He put the book beside him on the floor and rose to direct a disarming smile at me. I had to tilt my head back to look up at him.

“Good morning, Madonna Lisa.” He spoke in the deepest bass. “I trust you slept well. Shall I call for a servant? Someone to freshen the fire?”

“I just need Laura, please, and a basin of hot water. My husband is still sleeping, so if you could do this as quietly as possible…”

“Of course.” He bowed and I watched a moment as he went to the door leading out to the corridor. Outside, two more armed men rose as he instructed them in a low voice.

I went back to the bedchamber to find that Giuliano had already awakened. I greeted him happily, with enthusiastic kisses, as if I had never been frightened witless by the presence of the guards.

…

We attended Mass in the family chapel with Michelangelo and a few close Medici associates. Afterward we ate a late, leisurely lunch with Piero, Giovanni, and Michelangelo-again, with armed men posted just outside the door. On our way to the family dining hall, Giuliano explained that normally, the brothers took their meals with friends and advisors, but today they preferred privacy. I couldn’t help thinking that safety was a more appropriate word than privacy, since the corridors were filled with guards.

Giovanni was politely distant and seemingly unconcerned about his elder brother’s upcoming encounter with the Signoria; if he still nursed plans for annulling Giuliano’s marriage, he kept them to himself. Michelangelo directed his gaze at his food, only occasionally lifting it to glance shyly at me or the others. I had not realized before how literal Giuliano had been when he said Lorenzo had raised Michelangelo as his own son. Indeed, the brothers treated him as an equal.

Piero wore a constant frown and kept rubbing his neck as if it ached; he radiated extreme tension. Giuliano was controlled and pleasant, his focus on calming both me and Piero. The conversation was cursory until Giuliano cheerfully said:

“Fortune is with us. Antonio Loreno is proposto today.” I gathered Loreno was a friend-a good thing, since the proposto was the only Lord Prior who could propose a measure for discussion. For a day, he held the keys to the Signoria’s bell tower, which summoned all Florence to the piazza.

“Loreno?” Piero glanced up from his plate with faint hope.

Giuliano nodded. “He’ll make sure we get in so the Lord Priors can hear you out.” He paused. “What do you think is the best time to go? Late afternoon, perhaps? Vespers? At least then they won’t have the excuse of being absorbed with business or eating supper.”

Piero considered this, then seized upon the notion as if it were his own. “Yes.” He gave a firm nod. “We’ll go at vespers. I want you with me. And about twenty armed men. And… Dovizi.”

Giuliano rolled his eyes and sighed in frustration. “Whom do you intend to listen to? Me or him? Have you forgotten everything I told you last night? Everything he’s advised has made you look bad in the eyes of the people. I tell you, he is no longer our friend.”

“I’m listening to you,” Piero answered flatly. “But I want Dovizi there. For appearances’ sake.”

Giuliano said nothing, but I could tell from his suddenly unreadable expression that he was displeased.

Unprompted, Michelangelo broke the uncomfortable silence with a most inappropriate, timidly uttered announcement. “I am leaving for Venice tomorrow.”

None of the brothers had any response to this news.

The day passed too swiftly. Giuliano had business matters to attend to and a meeting with a bank agent- although I suspected the agent informed him more of political matters than financial. Laura brushed out my hair, then coiled it at the nape of my neck and tucked it in one of Madonna Alfonsina’s fine gold hairnets. “After all,” she said, “you are a married woman, and it would not do to let your hair hang down like a maiden’s.”

She then led me on a tour of the kitchens and the interior of the house, including the living quarters of Piero’s wife, Alfonsina, and their children. Afterward, she showed me the library, with its tall shelves of beautifully carved wood that held countless leather-bound tomes and parchment scrolls.

I chose a copy of Petrarch-his Canzoniere, containing more than three hundred sonnets. Most of the other volumes were in Greek (of which I knew nothing) or Latin (in which I possessed uncertain skill). I took the little book back to Lorenzo’s bedchamber and-smiling kindly at the Goliath of a guard who attended me-settled in the chair beside the freshly fed fire to read.

I had thought Petrarch a safe choice. He wrote in Tuscan, which would require little of my wavering concentration, and his love poetry would remind me of my reason for joy: Giuliano. Yet as I carefully turned the pages, I found nothing but torment. Poem after poem contained not the beauty of passion, but only the sorrow and torment it caused. Here was poor Petrarch, mourning the death of Laura, the object of his never-requited love:

… the lightning of her angelic smile, whose ray

To Earth could all of paradise convey

A little dust is now.

And yet I live-and that I live, bewail…

I scoffed at the tears that welled in my eyes and wiped them away, scolding myself; I had never been one to weep at poetry. Yet another sentence left me troubled:

But then my spirits are chilled, when at your departure

I see my fatal stars turn their sweet aspect from me.

My fatal stars. I remembered something I hadn’t thought about for a long time: the encounter with the astrologer and my stinging words to my mother, who had only been trying to spare me worry. In my mind, I could hear the astrologer’s voice: In your stars I saw an act of violence, one which is your past and your future.

I thought of my mother dying at Savonarola’s hands and was seized by the abrupt, unreasoning fear that Giuliano-my future-was to be his next victim.

“Stop,” I told myself aloud, then looked guiltily toward the door to see if my giant on the other side had heard me. There came no voice, no movement; I gave my head a little shake to clear it, then frowned and continued reading. I was determined to find something happy, something bright-a good omen to counter the ill.

I flipped through the pages again, and found, in Petrarch’s fluid Tuscan, the verse

Il successor di Karlo che la chioma

Co la corona del suo antiquo adorna

Prese a gia l’arme per fiacchar la corna

A Babilonia, et chi da lei si noma

The heir of Charlemagne, whose brow

The crown of ancient times adorns

Now wields his sword against the horns

Of Babylon, and those who to her bow.

I shut the book, set it down, and went over to the fire. The heat was fierce; I crossed my arms over my chest, tightly, as if to hold in the fear. They were all connected somehow: Leonardo, the third man, Lorenzo’s death, the