Painting Mona Lisa aka I, Mona Lisa

As I did, my shoe caught the soggy hem of my cloak. I lost my footing and fell, torn from Salai’s grasp, and came down hard on my free elbow, my knees. I struggled to push myself up; my palm pressed against cold, slick flagstone. At the same time, I raised the back of my wrist and wiped my burning eyes.

The soaked blindfold slipped and fell away. I found myself staring up at Salai’s handsome young face, now stricken with panic.

Near us, the horse and wagon waited. And behind him stood the massive walls of a great monastery, one I recognized quite well. He reached for me, tried to restrain me, but it was too late: I turned my head and glanced through the gray downpour at the piazza in the distance behind me.

The graceful colonnades of the Ospedale degli Innocenti, the Foundling Hospital, looked back at me from the other side of the street. Farther down, so far to my left that he appeared no larger than a fly, my driver Claudio had sought refuge beneath a loggia.

Salai and I were on the northern side of the church; Claudio waited for me on the western side, which faced the piazza.

Each time I had met with Leonardo, I had been at Santissima Annunziata the entire while.

LX

Salai and I did not speak; the crashing downpour made communication impossible. He pulled me to my feet, pulled the cowl of the cloak back over my head, and we ran again, this time back into the shelter of the monastery. There, in the entry hall of what I presumed was a dormitory, we caught our breaths. My knees and left elbow ached and were no doubt badly bruised, but no real damage had been done.

Salai made no effort to replace my blindfold; indeed, he motioned for me to pull the wool from my ears. He stood so close that our bodies touched, and said, his lips close to my ear, “Now you have the power to betray us all. Wait here. No one should come. If someone does, don’t speak-I’ll think of something when I return.”

I waited. In a moment, Salai returned with a large cloth. He helped me out of the sodden black cloak, then watched as I dried myself off as best I could.

“Good,” he said, when I handed the cloth back to him. “I was worried as to how you would explain your… damp condition to your coachman.”

“You need not tell Leonardo,” I said. “About my knowing where we are.”

He snorted. “It’s not as if we had any hope of hiding it from him, Monna. He can smell a lie as surely as we can smell blood on a butcher. Besides, I’m tired of driving you through town. Come.”

He led me up a flight of stairs, through a maze of corridors, and down, until we arrived at the narthex leading to the main sanctuary. There he left me, without so much as a backward glance.

I walked out beneath the shelter of an overhang, and waved at the loggia where Claudio waited.

That night, after Matteo had at last fallen asleep in the nursery, Zalumma unlaced my sleeves. I was curious, in the mood to talk.

“Did you know Giuliano?” I asked. “Lorenzo’s brother?”

Her mood was already troubled; I had come home shaken, with my hair inexplicably wet. Like Leonardo, she had a nose for deceit. And when I asked about Giuliano, her mood darkened further.

“I didn’t know him well,” she said. “I met him, on a few occasions.” She glanced up and to her left, at the far- distant past, and her tone softened. “He was a striking man; the few images I have seen of him don’t really show it. He was very happy, very gentle, like a child in the very best sense. He was kind to people even when he didn’t need to be. Kind to me, a slave.”

“You liked him?”

She nodded, wistful, as she folded my sleeves and set them in the closet, then turned back to me and began unlacing my gown. “He loved your mother dearly. She would have been very happy with him.”

“There was a man. In the Duomo,” I said. “The day Giuliano was killed. Someone… someone saw it happen. It wasn’t just Baroncelli and Francesco de’ Pazzi. There was another man, a man wearing a hood, to cover his face. He struck the first blow.”

“There was another man?” She was aghast.

“Another man, who escaped. And he has never been found. He might still be here in Florence.” My gown dropped to the floor; I stepped from it.

She let go an angry noise. “Your mother loved Giuliano more than life. When he died, I thought she would…” She shook her head and gathered my gown into her arms.

Very softly, I said, “I think that… someone else, someone in Florence… knows who he is. And the time will come when I learn who he is. On that day, he will finally meet justice-at my hand, I hope.”

“What good will it do?” she demanded. “It’s too late. Giuliano’s life is gone, and your mother’s destroyed. She was going to him that night. Did you know? She was going to leave your father to go with him to Rome… The night before he was murdered, she went to tell him so…”

I went and sat in front of the fireplace to warm myself. I said nothing more to Zalumma that night. I thought of my mother’s ruined life as I stared into the flames, and promised myself silently that I would find a way to avenge her, and both our Giulianos.

Winter passed slowly. In Leonardo’s absence, I went to pray almost daily in the little chapel at Santissima Annunziata. I missed the artist: He had been my one link to my real father and my beloved Giuliano. I knew that, like me, he grieved over their loss.

Almost every evening, when the way was clear-that is, when Francesco was off whoring-I stole down to his study and searched his desk for letters. For several weeks, I found nothing. I fought off disappointment by reminding myself that Piero was coming. Piero was coming, at which point I would abandon Francesco and-with Matteo, my father, and Zalumma-seek refuge with the Medici.

But Piero did not come.

As wife of a high-ranking piagnone, I was obliged to continue attending Savonarola’s Saturday sermons for the women. I went with Zalumma to San Lorenzo and sat close to the high altar and the lectern, the place reserved for those with ties to the prophet. I endured the sermon by imagining myself going to Leonardo and commissioning a beautiful monument for my Giuliano. But my attention was captured by Fra Girolamo’s ringing voice, filled with vitriol as he addressed his hushed congregation:

“Those lovers of Piero de’ Medici and his brothers, Giuliano and the so-called Cardinal Giovanni-”

Zalumma and I stared straight ahead; I dared not look at her. Pain and anger blinded me. I heard the prophet’s words, but I could not see his face. Fool, I thought. You don’t know that Giuliano is dead…

“God knows who they are! God knows their hearts! I tell you, those who continue to love the Medici are just like them: the rich, the idolatrous, who worship pagan ideals of beauty, pagan art, pagan treasures. And all the while, as they glitter and gleam with their gold and jewels, the poor starve! God tells me this-I do not speak for myself: Behold, those who worship such idolaters deserve to feel the bite of the executioner’s blade upon their necks. Like headless men they behave, without consideration of God’s law, without compassion for the poor. And so, they shall become headless, indeed!”

I remained silent, but inwardly I seethed as I remembered a line from the most recent letter discovered in Francesco’s study:

In fact, our prophet should now redouble his fervor, specifically against the Medici.

I seethed. And I trembled. And I prayed to Piero to come.

I found only one letter in Francesco’s study at that time-again, in the same heavy-handed script.

Your fears of excommunication are unfounded. I told you before to have faith. Let him preach without fear! Do not hold him back. You will see. Pope Alexander will relent.