“I can be strong,” I said, “like Lorenzo. Please, I would like to touch him. Just once, before we go.”
She was not a large woman, but I was not a large child. She lifted me with effort, trying to spare her injured wrist, just high enough so that I could touch Lorenzo’s cheek. Silly child, I had expected the contours and warmth of flesh, and was surprised to find the surface beneath my fingertips flat and cold.
“He was no fool,” she said, when she had lowered me. “He knew when to love, and when to hate.
“When his brother was murdered-when he saw the House of Medici was in danger-he struck out.” She looked pointedly at me.
“Do you understand that it is possible to be good yet destroy one’s enemies, Caterina? That sometimes, to protect one’s own blood, it is necessary to let the blood of others?”
I shook my head, shocked.
“If a man came to our door,” Clarice persisted, “and wanted to murder me, to murder Piero and you, could you do what was necessary to stop him?”
I looked away for an instant, summoning the scene in my imagination. “Yes,” I answered. “I could.”
“You are like me,” Clarice said approvingly, “and Lorenzo: sensitive, yet able to do what needs to be done. The House of Medici must survive, and you, Caterina, are its only hope.”
She smiled darkly at me and, with her bandaged hand, reached into the folds of her skirt to draw out something slender and shining and very, very sharp.
We returned to Clarice’s quarters, where Paola waited, and spent the next hour twisting silk scarves around jewels and gold florins. With Paola’s help, my aunt tied four heavy makeshift belts around her waist, beneath her gown. A pair of emerald earrings and a large diamond went into her bodice. Clarice helped Paola secure two of the belts on her person, then set aside one gold florin.
Then we sat for half an hour, with only Clarice knowing what awaited us. Prompted by a signal known only to her, Clarice picked up the gold florin and handed it to Paola.
“Take this to the boy,” she said. “Tell him to ready a horse and lead it through the stables and out the back, then wait there. Then you come to us at the main entry.”
Paola left. Aunt Clarice took my hand and led me downstairs to stand with her by the front door. When the servant returned, Clarice caught her shoulders.
“Be calm,” she said, “and listen carefully to me. Caterina and I are going to the stables. Stay here. The instant we leave, count to twenty-then open this door.”
Paola’s arms thrashed to free herself from Clarice’s grasp; she began to cry out, but my aunt silenced her with a harsh shake.
Paola trembled mightily but whispered: “I’ll do it.”
“May He keep you, then.”
Clarice gripped my hand. Together we ran the length of the palazzo, through the corridors and courtyard and garden until we were in sight of the stables. She stopped abruptly in the shelter of a tall hedge and peered past it at the now-unlocked iron gate.
I peered with her. On the other side of the black bars, bored rebel soldiers kept watch in front of a milling crowd.
Then I heard them, high and shrill: Paola’s screams. Clarice stooped down and pulled off her slippers; I did the same. She waited while all the men turned toward the source of the noise-then, when they all surged to the east, away from the gate, she drew in a long breath and ran west, dragging me with her.
We kicked up clouds of dust as we dashed past the heirs’ waiting carriage, past our own; the harnessed horses whinnied in protest. We came alongside the stables, then veered behind them, past the spot where I had lain after I learned Piero would leave me. There, next to the high stone wall, stood a saddled mount and an astonished boy-a wiry Ethiopian not much older than I, with a cloud of feather-light hair. Bits of straw clung to his hair and clothes. Like the horse’s, his eyes were wide and worried and white. The massive roan shied, but the boy reined it in with ease.
“Help me up!” Clarice demanded; the shouting out in the street had grown so loud he could barely hear her.
My aunt wasted no time with modesty. She hiked up her skirts, exposing white legs, and placed her bare foot in the stirrup. The horse was tall and she could not bring her leg over its withers; the boy gave her rump a mighty shove, which allowed her to scramble up into the saddle. She sat astride it, taking the reins in her good hand, and maneuvered the horse sidelong to the wall until her leg was pressed between the animal’s barrel and the stone. Then she pierced our young rescuer with her gaze.
“You swore on your life that you would tell the rebels nothing,” she said. It was an accusation.
“Yes, yes,” he responded anxiously. “I will say nothing, Madonna.”
“Only those who know a secret promise to keep it,” she said. “And there is only one secret the rebels would want to hear today. What might it be? They would not care about an absent stable master and his murdered grooms.”
His mouth fell open; he looked as though he wanted to cry.
“Look at you, covered in straw,” Clarice told him. “You hid because, like the others, you had heard too much, and they were going to kill you, too. You know where the heirs have gone, don’t you?”
Owl-eyed, he dropped his head and stared hard at the grass. “No, Madonna, no…”
“You lie,” Clarice said. “And I don’t blame you. I would be frightened, too.”
His face contorted as he began to weep. “Please, Donna Clarice, don’t be angry, please… Before God, I swear I will not tell anyone…I could have gone to the rebels, run to the gate and told them everything, but I stayed. I have always been loyal, I will be loyal still. Only do not be angry.”
“I’m not angry,” she soothed. “We’ll take you with us. Lord knows, if we don’t, the rebels will torture you until you speak. I’ll give you another florin if you tell me where Ser Ippolito and the others have gone. But first, hand me the girl.” She leaned down and held her arms out to me.
He was bony but strong; he seized me below the ribs and swung me like a bale of hay up into Clarice’s fierce clutches.
A wave of fear slammed against me. I endured it until it crested and faded, leaving everything still and silent its wake. I had a choice: to quail, or to harden.
I hardened.
At the instant the boy handed me to my aunt, I slipped the stiletto from its sheath, hidden in my skirt pocket. It sliced easily through the skin beneath the boy’s jaw, in the same grinning arc Clarice had drawn for me on her own throat, with her finger.
But I was a child and not very strong. The wound was shallow; he flinched and drew back before I could finish. With all my might, I plunged the weapon deeper into the side of his neck. He clawed at the protruding dagger and let go a gurgling shriek, his eyes bulging with furious reproach.
Clutching me, Clarice kicked the boy’s shoulder. He fell backward, still screaming while Clarice set me on the saddle in front of her.
I stared down at him, horrified and intrigued by what I had just done.
It did not seem like a kindness now, watching him flail in the new grass, the blood from his throat collecting in a pool on the grass near his shoulder, crimson against spring green.
Suddenly, ominously, he stilled and fell silent.
