“Saving and sacrifice; without the one the other cannot be done.”
Lapaccia could not bear the waiting. A pernicious knowing burned in her throat, raw from the coughing, sweat beading on her creased brow. She whirled from the window, the decision made.
Placing a veil upon her pinned locks and donning a simple, light camlet upon her shoulders, Lapaccia rushed from home.
She escaped her own palazzo, sight unseen by any servant. The triumph of the moment fled with its reality. She had never walked a street without someone—family member, friend, or servant—by her side. She felt so small even as each step struck the stones harder.
Turning west, it touched her…the malice crackling in the air like lightning. Lapaccia berated herself for such a notion; it was only because of Andreano’s absence, as was the nausea she felt.
Passing the corner of her home, she lowered her head, not wanting any member of the other palazzo on the block to see her, one belonging to the Pucci family. They possessed a genealogy as revered as her own; they would be scandalized to see her out and about alone.
Lapaccia turned the corner onto the Via Martelli with gratitude. The street here, as it headed crookedly south, was much narrowed and far less occupied. It would lead her past the back of the Duomo and into the heart of the city, to the Palazzo della Signoria. Surely someone at the government center may know where her Andreano was; perhaps he was on assignment as one of the newer council members. Or perhaps she would find some of his most favored companions; they would know something of him.
As she approached the cathedral, expecting to find the tranquil oasis that surrounds a church in the midst of Mass, she found bedlam.
This back passage was flooded as people ran in all directions. Lapaccia’s already churning gut clenched at the sight of unrecognizable wraiths…white-faced, mouths agape.
Lapaccia became one of them; she ran.
• • •
The stream running through the Via Calzaiuoli moved in two directions: the curious headed south; the frightened rushed north in escape. Snippets of words found Lapaccia, but she longed to toss them away—words of assassins and the Medici, words of brutality and death. But every time her brocade slippers slapped upon the road, her son’s name yelped in her mind.
Lapaccia froze at the lane’s mouth, near the opening to the piazza, at the back of the Church of Saint Cecilia. Before her was a sight she had never imagined in her darkest of thoughts.
“This is what hell looks like,” she muttered to herself, but the man rushing past heard.
“Take yourself away, signora. It is the end of the world.”
His ominous declaration jolted her. “What do y—”
The man was gone, lost in the stream roiling away.
The Piazza della Signoria could not be seen; it was there, she knew, marked by the towering rough-hewn stone campanile of the palazzo. Yet filled with such a frenzied crowd, the grandest courtyard of Florence was unrecognizable.
There! Her pale gray eyes latched upon the figure. Russet, wavy locks falling to his shoulders, slim but muscular figure cut nicely in a doublet of navy—her son’s favorite color. It must be him, running toward and into the government palace.
She picked up her skirts, lifted one foot, and—
The horse and rider bolted straight toward her. Though still in the middle of the square, its aim was like an arrow. A girl of no more than five stood frozen in front of Lapaccia, sobbing, her plain muslin gown tattered and torn.
“Run!” Lapaccia screamed at the child. “Run!” Lapaccia screamed again, this time to herself.
She ran without thought, without care. Like converging armies, she and the horse and rider trod a collision course, only the small body between them.
The churning crowd slowed the horse’s stampede; adrenaline fired Lapaccia faster. The throng parted. Her arms opened. The clamor of beating hooves pounded upon stone. The child’s cry hitched for air. Lapaccia’s arm reached out. The rider saw nothing as Lapaccia captured the child in her embrace, whisked her off her feet, and threw them both to the left, out of the path of the charging animal and his mount, into the relative safety of the moiling mob.
She fell then, not in a stumble but in relief, and the child plopped herself upon Lapaccia’s stomach as if it were a chair.
With an oomph of air, Lapaccia raised her head and almost laughed to see the little girl upon her. Sitting up, she wrapped her arms around the child, an embrace of gratitude. Pushing back the long, untethered strands of black hair falling about the pixie face, Lapaccia wiped the tears and dirt from the child’s eyes, her own squinting in recognition.
“I know you, little one, don’t I?” Lapaccia asked with a smile.
The child’s black eyes popped out as she jumped up.
“S—sorry, madonna.” The child squeaked. Without lifting her skirt as she should, the small girl attempted a curtsey and Lapaccia’s heart ached with the dearness of the sad endeavor.
“Have no fear, little one, you have done nothing wrong.” Standing, Lapaccia leaned down and took the child by the hand. “Your family owns a shop, yes? Here on the piazza?”
Lapaccia scanned the circumference of the square, hoping for a glimpse of recognition connecting this child to her home, but it was impossible in the turmoil.
“Where is your madre?” she finally asked.
Freed from fright by the presence of the noblewoman, the child turned and whirled, looking now at people where before there lurked only monsters. Pulling upon Lapaccia’s skirts, the girl spun her toward the southern corner.
“Mammina,” she peeped, a dimpled finger pointing to a woman pacing in the doorway of a Venetian glass shop, one Lapaccia had frequented on many occasions. From here, Lapaccia and her ward could see the woman’s mouth opening and closing, but could not hear her cry.
Lapaccia squatted beside the child, “Go while I watch. Do not leave again.”
The child nodded with fearful, enthusiastic obedience.
“Promise me,” Lapaccia did not release the child’s hand. “Promise me, piccolo cara mia, you will stay by your mother’s side.”
Did she speak to this child or her own, the missing son she still called her “dear little one,” even though he now stood head and shoulders above her.
The little girl nodded again. Then away, away she ran.
Lapaccia disappeared then, swallowed by the gaping mouth of the Palazzo della Signoria, noticed by no one but a child and her grateful mother.
• • •
“The palazzo is under attack! Salviati fights the Gonfaloniere! Perugians fight our militia!” The shrieks rushed by her like gale winds as Viviana made her way through the palazzo and into the side streets. The squall brought the sounds of metal clanging hard against metal.
Viviana covered her ears, still running, but could not drown out the scream, the worst yet.
“Popolo! Liberti!”
She knew that voice, that of the great patriarch Jacopo de’ Pazzi; she knew the cry of revolt, “People! Liberty!” How many times had such a cry brought upheaval, and how many lives had ended in response? But she heard no answer from the people, no agreement to take up arms against the Medici. What she heard instead gave her the strength to continue.
The countering yells began, sparsely at first, like the thin fluttering waves of the tide turning in. Soon they swelled to crashing breakers.
“Palle! Palle!” It was the rallying cry of the Medici, a reference to the balls upon the family’s crest, a cry declaring, “I am for the Medici!”
Sobbing now, with joy and pride for her people, with the shock of the lifetime she had lived in a few hours, Viviana turned the last corner, tripping on her skirts. With a cry, she thrust out her arms as the ground rose up to meet her. But it never did…he caught her.
Viviana looked up into the green eyes, those that haunted her, those forever hovering on the outskirts of her thoughts since the moment she had seen them almost two years prior.
He held her for an instant, held her head against his chest, and with a frown sent her on her way.
“Go!” he commanded, the first words spoken between them since that night. “Go. I will watch your back. Always.”
She knew so little of him, had seen him but a handful of times since the first, but, somehow, she trusted him, believed him.
Denying all she felt, Viviana turned and ran.