Read Online I, Mona Lisa by Jeanne Kalogridis - Free Book Online

raven-haired Anna was weeping, wringing her hands, mourning the children they might have had; her love tugged at him. But it was Lorenzo who had the final hold on his heart. Lorenzo whose heart would break when he found his younger sibling. It was Giuliano’s greatest regret.
    “
Brother
.” Giuliano’s lips formed the word as he sank to his knees.
    Lorenzo was sitting on the banks of the Arno, clutching a blanketround his shoulders. He was soaked through and shivering, but he was alive.
    Relieved, Giuliano let go a shallow sigh—all the air that remained in his lungs—then sank forward and down, down to where the waters were deepest and black.

 
     
     
     
     
     
VIII
     
     
    26 April 1478
    To the Priors of Milan
     
    My most illustrious lords,
     
    My brother Giuliano has been murdered and my government is in the gravest danger. It is now time, my lords, to aid your servant Lorenzo. Send as many soldiers as you can with all speed so that they will be the shield and safety of my state, as always.
     
    Your servant
Lorenzo de’ Medici

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    DECEMBER 28, 1479

 
     
     
     
     
     
IX
     
     
    B ernardo Baroncelli rode kneeling in a small horse-drawn cart to his doom.
    Before him, in the vast Piazza della Signoria, loomed the great, implacable palazzo, seat of Florence’s government and the heart of her justice. Topped by battlements, the fortress was an imposing, almost windowless rectangle, with a slender campanile tower at one corner. Only an hour before he was led to the cart, Baroncelli had heard its bell tolling, low and dolorous, summoning witnesses to the spectacle.
    In the morning gloom, the palazzo’s stone façade appeared pale gray against the darkening clouds. Before the building, rising out of a colorful, varied assembly of Florence’s rich and poor, stood a hastily built scaffolding, and the gallows.
    The weather had turned bitterly cold; Baroncelli’s final breaths hung before him as mist. The top of his cloak gaped open, but he could not pull it closed, for his hands were bound behind his back.
    In this manner, unsteady and lurching each time the wheels encountered a stone, Baroncelli arrived in the piazza. No fewer than a thousand had gathered to witness his end.
    At the crowd’s edge, a small boy, a
fanciullo
, caught sight of the approaching cart and, in his childish falsetto, sang out the rallying cry of the Medici: “
Palle! Palle! Palle!
”
    Hysteria rippled through the throng. Soon its collective shout thundered in Baroncelli’s ears.
    “
Palle! Palle! Palle!
”
    Someone nearby threw a stone; it clattered harmlessly against the cobblestones beside the creaking cart. Only curses were hurled afterward. The Signoria had placed several policemen on horseback at strategic locations to prevent a riot; Baroncelli was flanked by mounted, armed guards.
    This was to prevent him from being torn apart before he could be properly executed. He had heard the tales of his fellow conspirators’ gruesome fates: how the Perugian mercenaries hired by the Pazzi had been pushed from the high tower of the Palazzo della Signoria, how they had fallen into the waiting crowd below, who had hacked them to pieces with knives and shovels.
    Even old Iacopo de’ Pazzi, who during his life had been respected, had not escaped Florence’s wrath. Upon the sound of Giotto’s chiming campanile, he had climbed upon his horse and tried to rally the citizens with the cry
Popolo e libertà!
The phrase was a rallying cry to overthrow the current government—in this case, the Medici.
    But the populace had answered with the cry
Palle! Palle! Palle!
    Despite his sin, he had been granted a proper burial after his execution—with the noose still round his neck. But the city had been so filled with hatred in those wild days, he had not been at rest long before the Signoria decided it would be best to rebury his body outside the city walls, in unhallowed ground.
    Francesco de’ Pazzi and