Painting Mona Lisa. Jeanne Kalogridis

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ she hissed, her eyes lit by a fury I had never seen in her before. ‘Did she speak to you?’

      ‘I spoke to the astrologer myself.’

      This quieted her at once. and her expression grew unreadable. Carefully, she asked, ‘What else did he tell you?’

      ‘Only what I just said.’

      ‘No more?’

      ‘No more.’

      Abruptly drained, she sank back into her chair.

      Lost in my own anger, I did not stop to think that perhaps my kind and doting mother wished only to shield me from evil news. I jumped to my feet. ‘All that you have said is a lie! What others have you told me?’

      It was a cruel thing to say. She glanced at me, stricken. Yet I turned and left her sitting there, with her hand pressed to her heart.

      Later I realized that my mother and Zalumma had had a terrible argument. They had always been on the most amiable terms possible; but after the astrologer’s second visit, my mother grew cold each time Zalumma entered the room. She would not meet her slave’s gaze, nor would she speak more than a few words to her. Zalumma, in turn, was sullen and silent. Several weeks passed before they were friends once again.

      My mother never spoke to me again of my stars. I often thought of asking Zalumma to find the papers the astrologer had given my mother, so that I could read the truth for myself. But each time, a sense of dread held me back.

      I already knew more than I wished.

      Almost two years would pass before I learned of the crime to which I was inextricably bound.

PART I April 26, 1478

       III

      In the stark, massive Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, Bernardo Bandini Baroncelli stood before the altar and fought to steady his shaking hands. He could not, of course – no more than he could hide the blackness in his heart from God. He pressed palms and fingers together in a gesture of prayer, and held them to his lips. Voice unsteady, he whispered, pleading for the success of the dark venture in which he found himself entangled, pleading for forgiveness should it succeed.

      I am a good man. Baroncelli directed the thought to the Almighty. I have always meant others well. How did I come to find myself here?

      No answer came. Baroncelli fixed his gaze on the altar, fashioned of dark wood and gold. Through the stained glass windows in the cupola, the morning light streamed down in golden rays, glittering with dust as they glinted off the golden fixtures. The sight evoked unsullied Eden. Surely God was here; but Baroncelli sensed no divine presence, only his own wickedness.

      ‘God forgive me, a most miserable sinner,’ he murmured. His quiet prayer mingled with the hundreds of hushed voices inside the cavernous Church of Saint Mary of the Flower – in this case a lily. The sanctuary was one of the largest in the world, and was built in the shape of a Latin cross. Atop the juncture of the arms rested the architect Brunelleschi’s greatest achievement: il Duomo. Dazzling in its sheer expanse, the huge dome had no visible means of support. Visible from any part of the city, the orange brick cupola majestically dominated the skyline, and had, like the lily, become a symbol of Florence. It stretched so high that, when he first set eyes upon it, Baroncelli thought it must surely touch the Gates of Heaven.

      Baroncelli dwelt in a far lower realm this particular morning. Though the plan had seemed simple enough to be foolproof, now the painfully bright day had dawned, Baroncelli was overwhelmed with foreboding and regret. The latter emotion had always marked his life: born into one of the city’s wealthiest and most eminent families, he had squandered his fortune and fallen into debt at an advanced age. He had spent his life as a banker, and knew nothing else. His only choices were to move wife and children down to Naples and beg for sponsorship from one of his rich cousins – an option his outspoken spouse, Giovanna, would never have tolerated – or to offer his services to one of the two largest and most prestigious banking families in Florence: the Medici, or the Pazzi.

      He had gone first to the most powerful: the Medici. They had rejected him, a fact he still resented. But their rivals, the Pazzi, welcomed him into their fold; and it was for that reason, that today he stood in the front row of the throng of faithful beside his employer, Francesco de’ Pazzi. With his uncle, the knight Messer Iacopo, Francesco ran his family’s international business concerns. He was a small man, with a sharp nose and chin, and eyes that narrowed beneath dark, disproportionately large brows; beside the tall, dignified Baroncelli, he resembled an ugly dwarf. Baroncelli had eventually come to resent Francesco more than the Medici, for the man was given to fits of temper and had often loosed a nasty tongue on his employee, reminding Baroncelli of his bankruptcy with stinging words.

      In order to provide for his family, Baroncelli was forced to grin while the Pazzi – Messer Iacopo as well as young Francesco – insulted him, and treated him as an inferior when in fact he came from a family with equal, if not more, prestige. So when the matter of the plot presented itself, Baroncelli was presented with a choice: risk his neck by confessing everything to the Medici, or let the Pazzi force him to be their accomplice, and win for himself a position in the new government.

      Now, as he stood asking God for forgiveness, he felt the warm breath of a fellow conspirator upon his right shoulder. The man praying just behind him wore the burlap robes of a penitent.

      Standing to Baroncelli’s left, Francesco fidgeted and glanced right, past his employee. Baroncelli followed his gaze: it rested on Lorenzo de’ Medici, who at twenty-nine years old was the de facto ruler of Florence. Technically, Florence was governed by the Signoria, a council of eight priors and the head of state, the gonfaloniere of justice; these men were chosen from among all the notable Florentine families. Supposedly the process was fair, but curiously, the majority of those chosen were always loyal to Lorenzo, and even the gonfaloniere was his to control.

      Francesco de’ Pazzi was ugly, but Lorenzo was uglier still. Taller than most, and muscular in build, his fine body was marred by one of Florence’s homeliest faces. His nose – long and pointed, ending in a pronounced upward slope that tilted to one side – had a flattened bridge, leaving Lorenzo with a peculiarly nasal voice. His lower jaw jutted out so severely that whenever he entered a room, his chin preceded him by a thumb’s breadth. His disturbing profile was framed by a jaw-length hank of dark brown hair.

      Lorenzo stood awaiting the start of the Mass, flanked on one side by his loyal friend and employee, Francesco Nori, and on the other by the Archbishop of Pisa, Francesco Salviati. Despite his physiognomic failings, he emanated profound dignity and poise. In his dark, slightly protruding eyes shone an uncommon shrewdness. Even surrounded by enemies, Lorenzo seemed at ease. Salviati was a Pazzi relative, and no friend, though he and Lorenzo greeted each other as such; the elder Medici brother had lobbied furiously against Salviati’s appointment as Archbishop of Pisa, asking instead that Pope Sixtus appoint a Medici sympathizer. The Pope had turned a deaf ear to Lorenzo’s request, and then – breaking with a tradition that had existed for generations – he fired the Medici as the Papal bankers to replace them with the Pazzi – a bitter insult to Lorenzo.

      Yet today, Lorenzo had received the Pope’s own nephew, the seventeen-year-old Cardinal Riario of San Giorgio, as an honoured guest. After Mass in the great Duomo, Lorenzo would lead the young Cardinal to a feast at the Medici palace, followed by a tour of the famed Medici collection of art. In the meantime, he stood attentively beside the Riario and Salviati, СКАЧАТЬ