Jeanne Kalogridis - Painting Mona Lisa

‘Yes.’

He appraised me carefully. ‘I will not be party to deception. Do you understand?’

‘No.’

‘Hmm. I see that you do not.’ He paused to choose his words carefully. ‘Your mother, Madonna Lucrezia, said that you were the one who requested my services. Is that so?’

‘It is.’ I flushed, not knowing whether my admission would anger him further.

‘Then you deserve to hear at least some of the truth, for you will never hear the full of it in this house.’ His pompous irritation faded and his tone grew earnest and dark. ‘Your chart is unusual – some would say it is distressing. I take my art very seriously, young lady, and employ my intuition well, and it tells me that you are caught in a cycle of violence, of blood and deceit. What others have begun, you must finish.’

I recoiled, startled into silence by such unexpected harshness. When I found my voice, I insisted, ‘I want nothing to do with such things.’

‘You are fire four times over,’ he said. ‘Your temper is a furnace in which the sword of justice must be forged. In your stars, I saw an act of violence, one which is your past and your future.’

‘But I would never do anything to hurt someone else!’

‘God has ordained it. He has His reasons for your destiny.’

I wanted to ask more, but the astrologer called to his driver and a pair of fine black horses pulled them away.

Perplexed and troubled, I walked back towards the house. I lifted my gaze, and saw Zalumma staring down at me from the top floor window.

By the time I returned to my chamber, she was gone. There I waited for half an hour, until my mother called for me.

She still sat in the grand hall where she had received the astrologer. She smiled when I entered, apparently unaware of my encounter with him or of Zalumma’s distress. In her hand she bore a sheaf of papers.

‘Come, sit beside me,’ she said brightly. ‘I shall tell you all about your stars. They should have been charted long ago, so I have decided that you still deserve a new gown. Your father will take you today into the city, to choose the cloth; but you must say nothing to him about this.’ She nodded at the papers. ‘Otherwise, he will judge us as too extravagant.’

I sat stiffly, my back straight, my hands folded tightly in my lap.

‘See here.’ My mother set the papers in her lap and rested her fingertip on the astrologer’s elegant script. ‘You are Gemini, of course – air. And have Pisces rising, which is water. Your moon is in Aries – fire. And you have many aspects of earth in your chart, which makes you exceedingly well-balanced, and this indicates a most fortunate future.’

As she spoke, my anger grew. She had spent the past half-hour composing herself and concocting a happy falsehood. The astrologer had been right; I could not expect to find the truth here.

‘You will have a long, good life, wealth, and many children,’ my mother continued. ‘You need not worry about which man you marry, for you are so well-aspected towards every sign that—’

I cut her off. ‘No, I am fire four times over,’ I said. ‘My life will be marked by treachery and blood.’

My mother rose swiftly; the papers in her lap slipped to the floor and scattered. ‘Zalumma!’ 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.

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.