Epilogue

Early the following morning, Girolamo Savonarola left the Bagno à Morba and walked away, alone.

He followed the narrow lane to the main mountain road, turned right and began to climb up towards the pass, toward Montecerboli, on to Montecastelli, past Monteguidi, through Càsole d’Elsa, and then down the long slope to Colle di Val d’Elsa. From there he would follow the river past Poggio Imperiale before he began the second long climb over the hills to Tavarnelle and then finally down again to Florence, and his future.

He was grim-faced. His sandals were badly worn and he was not sure they would last the long walk. The mist he could see ahead of him would, he knew, soon soak through the rough material of his cassock and his shirt and hair shirt beneath. Before the day was out, the blood from his iron belt would surely be running down his legs, as had happened many times before. And when that happened, passers-by would look at him and start to consider whether he was an escaped criminal, or just, as many had thought in the past, another lunatic monk.

But none of those matters was the reason for his grim face. That was caused by the two questions, questions that niggled away at him as he began to climb.

The first was how to use the knowledge he had gained at the Bagno à Morba in God’s name?

Now, he felt, he was starting to understand the city he was returning to. Such deceits and vanities. Burning was the only answer. But how could he bring this about? It would need long and careful thought, and slow and careful action. It might take him years. But at least he knew who to talk to now. And what questions to ask them. And which of their answers to believe.

There was no rush. God was not in any hurry.

But at that moment, as he started to climb into the barren hills, the question that was really troubling him was the second one. How could he get all the way to the Monastery of San Marco in Florence without his secret being discovered?

His secret was a burden, both physically and mentally. If discovered, he would not last one day in front of Lorenzo. The very thought of it made his throat go dry. For in his leather satchel, beside his bible, wrapped in his now-bulging breviary and surrounded by his spare shirt, were pages and pages of detailed notes, each in his tiny spidery handwriting. Between them, they recorded everything that Mona Lucrezia had said.