“Disease is contagious, as is Madness.”
“Viviana. Viviana! You must come away, now!”
Whether prodded by the urgency in his voice or the tugging of his insistent hand on her arm, Viviana came into awareness, away from the sight of Giuliano de’ Medici’s journey to death.
Looking upward, gaze ablur with tears, her mouth open yet silent, she found the stricken face of Patrizio inches away. He bobbled and staggered as he tugged on her arm
Fiammetta wailed, desperate and despairing. She slapped at her husband’s grip, longing to be free of it, longing to flee. But Patrizio would not let go of either of them.
Viviana pushed to her feet, uncurling slowly as if the pain of her heart infested her body. For an instant, she put her hands to her ears to dull the cacophony—Fiammetta’s yowling, the screams of so many still fleeing the cathedral, the shouts of men trying to gain control. Above all, Lorenzo’s pleas escaping out the cracks of the closed sacristy door, crying his brother’s name, begging for an answer in each anguished call. She could not bear another moment of it.
Squatting beside the body of Giuliano, blood running from him in a widening pool of glistening red, Viviana reached out a quivering hand and closed the dead man’s eyes, feeling the warmth belying the end of his life. She draped a piece of tattered linen ripped from the edge of her chemise over his torso and head and rose up with a wavering breath, having done the best—the only—thing she could.
“Now, Viviana.” Patrizio pulled again.
“Yes, now.” She nodded and turned away, never to turn back again.
• • •
Blinded at first, the sun too bright after the bleached and dim interior, colors and light assaulted her. Viviana blinked, but to no avail; what she saw was the truth—the contained chaos inside the cathedral had spread to the piazza, spread and expanded, a beastly thing.
People streamed out of the Duomo, but they were not the same who had entered less than an hour ago; now they were pale ghosts of their former selves. Loosened animals ran amok at their feet, their squeaks and squawks adding to the din, tripping people in a pandemic rush.
Viviana searched the crowd for her sons—soldiers garrisoned for months—for Isabetta, for Mattea, for Lapaccia.
“Viviana!”
Patrizio had released his hold on her but would not release her from his security. He called her out of paralysis as his still wailing wife yanked him down the few narrow marble steps. Viviana staggered toward them.
Amongst the churning humanity, the three turned south, toward their home quarter.
At the corner of the stairs, Patrizio pulled the two women out of the fray, pulled them against the stone of the Duomo.
“It will be hard going.” He took his wife’s face in his hands, his words, his glare, cutting through her mania. “We must hold tight and fast, yes?”
Fiammetta, mouth finally closed, quietly nodded, as did Viviana, dropping her forehead in her hand; she could bear to see no more, yet more came.
At her feet, a young boy crouched in the small, shadowy corner where stairs met wall. Huddled into a tight ball, he looked no more than eight or nine years old, was barely visible except from her vantage point. He showed no fear; his black eyes bulged wide with eager curiosity.
“Do not look, child,” she berated softly. It sickened her to see him seeing.
Her words brought Patrizio’s attention to the child.
“Niccolo, to your home,” Patrizio spoke unkindly, a man already overburdened.
“No, signore, I must see.”
Patrizio swiped his hands together twice, switching one across the other, and raised them in the air in washed surrender. “At least stay out of the way.” Taking each woman once more by the hand, he pulled them forward, head bent as if walking into a storm.
Viviana hesitated, fighting the tug of her escort. “Is he an urchin?”
Orphaned boys lived on the streets of Florence in droves, stealing their way through life. The conte shook his head, kept them running. “No, the Machiavellis live just over the Ponte Vecchio, in Santo Spirito. His father is a fine consigliore.”
Viviana steeled a look back at the boy, at the shining, gruesome curiosity on his young face. A shiver of fear ran up her back. “We must—”
“We must get you home.” The conte yelled above the screaming crowds. “You must return to your husband. He will be worried for your well-being.”
Even as Patrizio compelled her, two men pushed him roughly, unconscionably, rushing away. As they whirled past, Viviana knew them for the devils who had brought evil upon her world, knew them as Bernardo Bandini and Francesco de’ Pazzi.
Mouth agape, she watched Francesco hobbling as fast as he could, leaning on Bandini’s arms, wounded thigh dropping scarlet circles of blood in their wake. Her blood surged, her heart pounded in her ears.
She grabbed her skirts, lifted them, and shot out after the fleeing murderers.
The yank on her arm snapped her head back like a whip.
“They will kill you without thought,” Patrizio hissed, his lips so close his spittle splashed cold on her hot skin.
Heaving with anger, she stared at her friend, hearing the cries of his wife, the annoying bleat of a sheep in the field. Viviana knew Patrizio was right, but it did little to curb her craving for retribution. She had never known the feeling called blood lust…till now.
“Orfeo, Viviana. You must go to Orfeo.”
Patrizio’s words caught her up sharply; in the tumult of this inhuman moment, the truth almost slipped from her soul. She shook her head, denying it. “Yes, of course. To my husband I must go.”