I, Mona Lisa (18 page)

At supper, my father would repeat what Fra Girolamo had said. He yearned to find the right turn of phrase, to evoke the precise emotion that would procure my forgiveness and inspire me to go to San Marco with him. I never responded to his assertions, but addressed myself strictly to the food before me.

I walked with Zalumma twice a day, in sun and rain, to our nearby church of Santo Spirito. I did so not because I wished to be pious—I still possessed a good deal of rancor toward God—but because I wanted to be close to my mother. Santo Spirito had been her favorite refuge. I knelt in the cold church and stared at the graceful wooden carving of Christ, expired upon the cross. On His face was a look not of suffering, but of deep repose. I hoped my mother shared a similar peace.

Three miserable weeks passed in this fashion. Then, one evening, after I had supped alone because my father was late, a knock came at my chamber door.

I had been reading my mother’s precious copy of Dante, trying to decide in which circle of Heaven Fra Girolamo might place himself; trying to decide to which circle of Hell I would confine him.

Zalumma was with me. She had grieved in private as best she could, hiding her tears, but she had known my mother far longer than I had. I would wake at night after disturbing dreams to find her sitting up, motionless in the dark. During the day, she devoted herself to me with a passion. When the knock came that evening, she was squinting next to the oil lamp we shared, decorating one of the handkerchiefs for my
cassone,
my wedding chest, with fine embroidery.

“Come,” I said reluctantly. I recognized the knock and had no desire for conversation.

My father opened the door halfway. He still wore his heavy black mantle and his cap. He slumped against the jamb and said, in a tired voice:

“There is cloth downstairs, in the great chamber. I had the servants spread it out for you. There was too much to bring up here.” He moved as if those words alone were explanation enough.

“Cloth?”

My question made him pause. “Choose what you wish, and I will bring a tailor for you. You are to have a new gown. Have no concern regarding the expense: It must be as becoming as possible.”

Beside me, Zalumma—who had also done her best to ignore my father since my mother’s death—glanced up sharply from her sewing.

“Why?” I could not imagine what had prompted this in him, other than a sudden desire to win back my affections. But such behavior was at total odds with the teachings of Savonarola: The friar frowned on sartorial display.

He sighed. The question vexed him; he answered grudgingly. “You are to attend a function at the house of Lorenzo de’ Medici.”

Il Magnifico
—the very target of Savonarola’s preaching against wealth and excess. I was too stunned for an instant to reply.

He turned and left then, heading quickly down the stairs, and none of my calls after him would bring him back.

Zalumma and I went down that night, but in order to better see my father’s gift, we returned in the morning so that we had the light.

In the reception chamber, measures of Florence’s most breathtaking fabrics—in my father’s puzzling defiance of the city’s sumptuary laws—had been neatly folded and arranged in a dazzling display. These were not the somber colors suitable for a child of one of Savonarola’s
piagnoni.
There were peacock blues, turquoise, blue-violets and bright saffron, vivid greens and roses; there were delicate shades known as “peach blossom,” “Apollo’s hair,” and “pink sapphire.”
For the
camicia,
there were fine white silks, as light as air and embroidered in silver thread, others in gold; there was a dish set nearby of seed pearls, which could be added to the finished product. There were shiny damasks, rich brocades, voided velvets, multiple-pile velvets, and thinner silk velvets threaded with gold and silver. What caught my eye was the
cangiante,
shot silk with a stiff taffeta weave. When held to the light, it reflected at first a deep scarlet; yet when the fabric was slowly moved, the color changed to emerald.

Zalumma and I were like children presented with a plate of sweets: We indulged ourselves, unwinding the fabrics, placing some together to better imagine the finished product. I draped them over my shoulder, across my body, then stared into my mother’s hand mirror to see which color most suited me; Zalumma gave her blunt opinion on each. For the first time in weeks, we laughed softly.

And then a thought struck me, abruptly darkening my mood. I had not been able to fathom why my pious father would permit me to attend a party at the Medici palazzo. First, it was too soon after my mother’s death for me to be seen dressed in a party gown; second, he was, by virtue of his devotion to Savonarola, an enemy of the Medici now (business matters, of course, had nothing to do with those of the soul, and so he continued to sell his wares to them). There was only one explanation for his desire to send his daughter in magnificent attire to see
il Magnifico:
Lorenzo was the unofficial marriage broker for all of moneyed Florence. No child of the upper classes dared wed without his approval, and most families preferred that Lorenzo choose the spouse. I was to be scrutinized, judged like a calf before slaughter. But almost every bride had seen fifteen summers.

My presence in the household was a reproach to my father, a constant reminder of how he had ruined my mother’s life. “I am not quite thirteen,” I said, carelessly dropping the bewitching
cangiante
into a pile on my lap. “Yet he cannot wait to be rid of me.”

Zalumma set down a fine measure of voided velvet and smoothed it with her hand, then gazed steadily at me. “You
are
too young,” she said. “But Ser Lorenzo has been very ill. Perhaps your father merely wishes to have his counsel while he is still among us.”

“Why would my father consult him at all, unless he saw a way to marry me off quickly now?” I countered. “Why else take the advice of a Medici? Why not wait and see me married off to one of the
piagnoni
?”

Zalumma moved to a sumptuous piece of celery-colored damask and lifted it. Sunlight reflected off its shiny, polished surface, revealing a pattern of garlands woven into the cloth. “You could refuse,” she said. “And, as you say, wait a few more years and then be married off to one of Savonarola’s weepers. Or . . .” She tilted her lovely face to study me. “You could let
il Magnifico
make the choice. Were I the bride, I would certainly prefer the latter.”

I considered this, then set the
cangiante
aside. While the interplay of hues was intriguing, the fabric was too stiff, the red and green too intense for my coloring. I rose, took the celery damask from Zalumma’s hand, and set it down beside a deep blue-green voided velvet, a pattern of satin vines running through the thick plush. “This,” I said, resting a finger on the velvet, “for the bodice and skirt, edged with the damask. And the brocade with greens and violets, for the sleeves.”

The dress was assembled within a week, after which I was called upon to wait.
Il Magnifico
’s health had been steadily declining, and it was uncertain when or even whether the affair would take place. I was strangely relieved. Though I did not relish living under my father’s roof, I relished even less the thought of going to live so soon under a stranger’s. And while taking up residence in my mother’s quarters brought painful memories, it also brought an odd comfort.

A second week passed; then, at supper, my father was uncharacteristically silent. Though he often repeated the friar’s assertion that God had taken my mother to Heaven out of kindness, his eyes betrayed uncertainty and guilt, as they did that night.

I could not bear to look at him for long; I finished my meal swiftly. When I excused myself from the table, he interrupted.

“
Il Magnifico
has summoned you.” His tone was curt. “Tomorrow, in the late afternoon, I am to take you to the palazzo on the Via Larga.”

I
was not, my father iterated firmly, to speak of this with any of the servants save Zalumma. Not even our driver was to know; my father would take me himself, in the carriage he reserved for business.

The next day found me overcome by anxiety. I was to be on display, my good attributes and bad noted and used to determine my future. I would be studied and critiqued by Lorenzo and, I expected, a group of carefully chosen highborn women. My nerves were further undermined by the revelation that Zalumma would not be allowed to accompany me.

The gown, cunningly fitted to suggest a woman’s shape where there was none, was far grander than anything I had worn. The full skirts, with a short train, were of the deep blue-green velvet with its pattern of satin vines; the bodice was of the same velvet with insets of Zalumma’s pale green damask. At the high waist was a belt of delicately wrought silver. The sleeves were slashed and fitted, made from a brocade woven from turquoise, green, and purple threads interlaced with those of pure silver. Zalumma pulled my
camicia
through the slits, and puffed it according to the fashion; I had chosen the gossamer white silk, shot through with silver thread.

With my hair there was nothing but frustration. I wore a cap made from the brocade, trimmed with seed pearls, and since I was an unmarried girl, my hair was allowed to fall free onto my shoulders. But the coarse waves were irregular, in need of taming; Zalumma struggled with a hot poker to create fetching ringlets. But my locks would not hold them, and the effort created only more chaos.

As it was late February, I put on the sleeveless overdress—the brocade, trimmed with a thick stripe of the damask, then by white ermine. It was open at the center to reveal the full glory of the gown. Round my neck I wore my mother’s necklace of seed pearls, with a large pendant of aquamarine; it had been sized to fall just above the bodice, so that it rested cold against my skin.

At the last, Zalumma drew me to stand before a full-length mirror. I drew in a breath. I had never seen myself look so comely; I had never looked so much like my mother.

When she led me down to my waiting father, I thought that he would weep.

I sat beside my father in the carriage, as I often had when I used to accompany him on business to homes of the nobility. I wore a dark blue wool cape to hide my finery, in compliance with the sumptuary laws.

As he drove, my father was gloomy and reticent; he stared at the late winter landscape, his eyes haggard, squinting at the bright afternoon sun. He wore his usual attire of a plain black wool tunic and worn leggings with a black mantle—not at all appropriate for the function we were about to attend.

The afternoon air was pleasantly brisk, scented with the smoke from countless hearths. We rode alongside the Arno, then crossed the Ponte Vecchio, where most of the shops were still open. I remembered my exuberance the last time I had crossed the old bridge with Zalumma and my mother, how I had taken delight in the magnificent fabrications of the artists and goldsmiths; now, sitting beside my father, I was unable to summon a scrap of joy.

When we crossed the bridge onto the broad Via Larga, I realized
that, should I want to voice the question that had been gnawing at me, I had to do so quickly, as we would soon be at our destination.

“Fra Girolamo does not approve of the Medici,” I said. “Why do you take me to Lorenzo?”

My father gazed out at the landscape and rubbed his beard. “Because of a promise. One that I made long ago.”

So, perhaps Zalumma had been right. Perhaps my mother had asked that her daughter’s husband be chosen by the wisest marriage broker in town, and my father, when he was still besotted with his wife instead of Savonarola, had agreed. And knowing that Lorenzo’s health was failing, my father was being cautious and choosing the groom well ahead of time.

Shortly thereafter, my father pulled the carriage up to the gated entry of Lorenzo’s palazzo. An armed man opened the iron gate and we rolled inside, near the stables. I waited for my father to rise and help me down, then escort me on his arm into the palazzo. For the first time in years, I was grateful for his presence.

But he surprised me. “Wait,” he said, extending a warning arm when I moved to rise. “Just wait.”

I sat in a torment of anticipation until, minutes later, the side doors to the palazzo swung open, and a man—followed by a pair of guards—walked out slowly, gingerly, with the help of an exquisitely carved wood-and-gold cane.

In the months since I had seen him, Lorenzo had aged; though he was only a few years past forty, he looked decades older. His skin was sagging, jaundiced. Only one thing pointed to his relative youth: his hair, pure black without a single lock of gray.

But even leaning on the cane, he walked with grace and dignity, and the self-possessed air of a man who had never once questioned his own importance. He glanced over his shoulder at one of the guards and gave a nod; the summoned man hurried forward and offered me his arm. I took it and let him help me down.

My father followed and bowed to our approaching host.

“God be with you, Ser Antonio,”
il Magnifico
said as he stepped up to us.

“And with you, Ser Lorenzo,” my father replied.

“So this is our Lisa?”

“This is she.”

“Madonna Lisa.” Lorenzo bowed stiffly, cautiously, from the shoulders. “Forgive me if I cannot make proper genuflection to such a beautiful young woman.”

“Ser Lorenzo.” I made a full proper curtsy, though I was undone.

“Lisa.” My father spoke softly, swiftly. “I leave you to Ser Lorenzo’s care. I will be in the chapel here, attending vespers. When you are ready, I will fetch you.”

“But Father—” I began; before I could say more, he had bowed again to Ser Lorenzo, then followed one of the guards into the palazzo.

I was abandoned. I understood my father’s intention then: No one but the parties directly involved would ever know he had brought me here. Even those who saw us come in the gate would think that he was simply conducting business, delivering wools to Ser Lorenzo as he always had, with his daughter to accompany him.