her life and missed all of the landmarks of my youth. She was absent while I began to walk and talk, take my First Communion. Best for whom? For her. My heart began to harden—to mirror hers.
“Then, at twelve, you disappeared.”
And did she know why? Because I fell in with Enna, whom I met on the way back from mass when I’d dawdled behind the others; the sisters’ white wimples disappeared round the corner as I admired Ennas’s pretty dress. Because I’d thought her a beautiful vision, perhaps my Vero Madre come for me—for then at thirty Enna was already old enough to be my dam. Because she’d told me I could earn five florins for an act that would take a moment, that if I could suck on a man’s cock and pretend it was a honey teat, I’d have three coins for myself and two for her, and I could buy a pretty dress of my own. Because I’d gone with her to a palazzo in Tornabuoni and sucked off one of those minor Medicis, got my three florins as promised. Because I’d gone into business at the age of twelve and never looked back. Because I’d whored for four years till I stole a painting and met a monk who changed my life.
“We kept your disappearance secret from the Pisans; spread tales of your great beauty, your convent education. I told everyone you were the image of me, and you are. I prayed that you would be found, and you were. Benvolio Malatesta, the pearl merchant, told our spies of a girl he was . . . seeing.”
Bembo gave me away? Huh.
“He knew her to be the right age and the image of myself.” The masked head inclined graciously. “So we took steps to verify your identity.”
“You got Botticelli to paint me so you could see if it was really me?” It sounded incredible.
“No, not that. We knew who you were by then, that is why you were asked to be in the painting. It was no accident. But before we could claim you, you were gone. You led us quite a dance, and we were not able to recover you until now. Granted, it was not done in the best way, thanks to your betrothed—you collapsed from the shock of the events of the wedding and have been insensible ever since. We gathered you up and brought you here.”
Betrothed. She uttered the word oddly, in the present sense, as if Niccolò della Torre and I were still intended. Lord Silvio had betrothed me to Niccolò in the cradle. He had known of me before Brother Guido and I had even met.
Brother Guido. I asked now the question that should have been my first, but I had been afraid of the answer. “What happened to Guido della Torre?”
“Who?” The faceless voice was impatient.
“My . . . companion. The Pisan lord.”
“Ah, yes, the monk who would be nobleman. Cousin to Lord Niccolò. He was taken away by the Medici guards. He will no doubt be dispatched for his insolence.”
I near fainted again. “Executed?” The fly-blown Pazzis dangled from their nooses in my mind’s eye. The hanged man turned in the Arno, holding his eyeless face above the current.
“Of course. He impersonated his liege lord, a matter of treason in Tuscany. And moreover he disrupted a ceremony of the Florentine state. He is in many kinds of trouble.” She waved at a passing barge, and the company that rose there bowed to her reverently. “Lord Niccolò may decide to be clement, if he is in a merciful mood.”
My heart thumped in my throat as I remembered Niccolò’s corrosive, competitive hatred for my friend. If Brother Guido’s fate was in his cousin’s hands, he was as good as dead.
“But he will be tried first?”
She shrugged, delicately. “Perhaps. Here—yes. Our system of justice is well regulated. But in the barbaric middle lands? I think in Tuscany you are used to more . . . summary justice?”
Prickles of sweat broke from my skin despite the killing cold. My heart raced in a panic. “Then I must return. I must seek him—help him!” I stood and the golden barge lurched, my head spun, and I lurched with it. I fell back on the cushions, but not before my mother’s white hand closed on my arm in an iron grip.
“If you stay and do my bidding as my dutiful daughter, I shall do all I can to hear news of him. Perhaps I could