to remove them all. Florence began to stink.
Despite Francesco’s wealth and connections, we felt the lack. Agrippina ran out of bread first, then flour, so we went without our customary pasta in broth; the hunters brought us fowl, which we ate until we could no longer bear the sight of it.
By winter, even we rich had grown desperate.
Christmas passed, then the New Year. Carnival came-once a time of celebration, with parades and parties and feasting, but under Savonarola’s guidance, the new Signoria outlawed such pagan displays.
At last word came that the Signoria had elected to allow stores of government grain to be sold at a fair price to the people at the Piazza del Grano on the morning of Tuesday, the sixth of February, the last day of Carnival. Lent began on the morrow.
The cook, Agrippina, had lost a nephew to plague only a few days before. For fear of bringing
Of course, it was her duty to go buy grain and bread for us. It made sense that she should go to the Duomo and offer her prayers, then go the short distance to the Piazza del Grano and make her purchases.
And I, restless as I was, presented to Francesco my argument for accompanying Agrippina to the Duomo. It was not far at all; there would be few crowds; I was anxious to pray. To my delight, he relented.
And so, on the appointed Tuesday, I climbed into the carriage with Agrippina and Zalumma, and Claudio drove us east, toward the orange-brick dome.
The sky was clear and fiercely blue. The air was still, and as long as I could sit motionless in a pane of sunlight, I felt its feeble warmth; but any shade brought bitter cold. I stared outside the carriage at the shops, the houses, the churches, the people moving slowly through the streets. Before Savonarola had seized the heart of Florence, Carnival had been a beautiful time; as a child, I had ridden through the streets and gaped at the facades of the buildings-formerly bland and gray, they had been transformed by red and white banners, by gold-shot tapestries, by garlands of bright paper flowers. Men and women had danced through the streets wearing painted masks adorned with gold and diamonds; lions and camels from the Medici menageries had paraded past for the amusement of the citizens.
Now the streets were again quiet and dull, thanks to the prophet’s hatred.
Zalumma and the cook did not speak. Agrippina was a gray-haired woman of peasant birth, not given to conversation with those she considered her betters. She was squat, with a broad face, thick bones, and few teeth. One brown eye was clouded and blind, but with her good one, she gazed out of the window, like me hungry for new scenery.
We had agreed that it would be best to pray later and buy the food first, before supplies ran scarce. And so we rolled past the Duomo and headed south, toward the great toothy battlements of the Palazzo della Signoria’s tower. The Piazza del Grano, a modest-sized square, stood behind the palazzo, on its eastern side. Abutting the palazzo’s rear wall were large bins of wheat and corn, behind sturdy wooden fences; in front of those stood makeshift stalls, with scales for the transactions. In front of the stalls was a low gate, which remained locked until there was business to be done.
Claudio pulled the carriage up to the outer perimeter of the square; we could go no farther. I had expected a crowd, but I had not expected what I saw: The square was crammed with bodies, so many that not a speck of ground was visible. There were hundreds of bareheaded peasants with dirt-smudged faces and blackened hands, their shoulders wrapped in shreds of wool as they cried out for mercy, for alms, for a handful of grain. Beside them recoiled noblewomen in furs and velvets, who had not trusted their slaves to bring home food, and grim-faced servants, elbowing past the equally determined poor.
I leaned my head out the carriage; from my high perspective, I could see several men inside the stalls, heads pressed together, conferring in front of the still-locked gate. They had sensed the growing unease, as had our horses, who began to pace nervously. None of us had expected such a crowd so early.
Claudio swung down from the driver’s seat and put his hands upon the carriage door, but did not open it. He was scowling.
“Perhaps I should go,” he said. “Agrippina is small; she’ll never be able to fight her way to the gate.”
She snorted and looked down her nose at him with her good eye. “I’ve seen this family fed for forty years. No crowd can stop me.”
Claudio kept his gaze on me. “Both of you go,” I said. “That way, your chances are better. Zalumma and I will wait in the carriage.”
Claudio gave a curt nod and opened the door for Agrippina, who clambered out with some difficulty; only half his height, she turned and walked toward the crowd beside him and he rested a hand on the hilt of his long knife.
I watched them disappear into the throng-until a face appeared abruptly in the carriage window, startling me.
The woman in the window was young, no older than I; her uncovered hair was matted, her blue eyes bulging, wild. Her sunken cheeks were streaked with soot. A silent infant was slung in a scarf at her breast.
“Pity, Madonna,” she said, in a thick rustic accent. “Have pity, for the sake of Christ! A coin, a bit of food for my baby…!”
Zalumma’s face was hard; her hand went to her bodice. “Go away! Get away from our carriage!”
The beggar’s red-rimmed eyes and nose streamed from the cold. “Madonna, God has sent you here to me! For the sake of Christ…”
Had it not been for the baby, I might have been more wary. As it was, I fumbled for the purse at my waist; I pulled out a soldi. I meant to put it in her filthy, ungloved hand, but the thought of Matteo and the plague made me instead toss it in her direction.
She tried to catch it with numbed, clumsy fingers; it fell just outside the window, and she dove to find it. She was not alone. Another nearby peasant had seen, and fell on her; she started shrieking, and soon others were attracted to the row.
“Get away!” Zalumma shouted. “Leave us be!”
Still others came, men and young boys. One began to beat the young beggar woman until she squalled, then fell abruptly, ominously silent.
“She had one coin-there are more!” someone said. Our horses shrieked and lunged forward; the carriage jerked and began to rock.
“Death to the wealthy!” a man shouted. “They take our food and leave us nothing!”
Dirty faces filled the window; arms reached through, strange hands plucked at us. Someone pulled open the door.
Beside me, Zalumma reached into her bodice and withdrew a slender, two-edged knife. She slashed out at the flailing arms; a man yelped and cursed.
And then, from the direction of the crowd came thunderous shouts, the lightning crack of wood splitting, and a rumble that sounded like the earth heaving. The beggars assaulting our carriage turned like flowers to sunlight; in an instant they, too, were running toward the sound, leaving us quickly abandoned.
I clung to the frame of the open carriage door and stared out.
The crowd had broken through the locked gate and rushed past the stalls; as I watched, they swarmed the fence that guarded the bins of grain and tore it down. Two men-one still a lad-scrambled up the sides of the bins and scattered handfuls of grain onto the desperate crowd below.
A tide of starving indiscriminate flesh surged forward; countless hands clawed at the sky, grasped at the succoring rain. Screams rose in the midst of the madness, as the swift and strong trampled the slow and infirm.
And as the laughing men on the pinnacle pelted the sea of pinched faces below, I heard a low, rhythmic chant, soft at first, then growing louder and louder, spreading swift as fire through the frenzied crowd:
I seized Zalumma’s arm and gripped it hard; I sobbed aloud, but shed no tears.
That day, dozens were killed-trampled or suffocated-in the rush for food. Every soldier, every gendarme, was called out to quell the riot and send people back to their homes-if they had them. Agrippina’s chest and legs were
