“The tide turns slowly but inexorably,
And none in Heaven or on Earth can stop it.”
“Orfeo!” Viviana cried his name even before she pushed open the heavy paneled door, rattling the brass anchor of the Marrone family crest. He must have received word of the nightmare overtaking their city by now, must have realized his wife could be trapped in the heart of it. Worry is a catalyst powerful enough to warm the coldest of hearts, surely it was.
“Orfeo!”
Viviana twirled about in the small foyer, unsure if her husband was still abed or elsewhere in the modest home.
“Mona Viviana!”
The distraught squeak came from behind, and Viviana whirled about to find Jemma rushing toward her, a small bundle of energy and emotion.
Her lady’s maid’s dark, round eyes bulged at the sight of her blood-covered mistress; her mouth emptied at the appalling apparition.
“My husband, where is—”
“Are you hurt? Are you injured?” Jemma grabbed Viviana’s bloodied hands, turning them about, grabbing Viviana by the shoulders, searching her mistress’s body for a wound.
Viviana denied the question with a shake of her head. “No, I am not. I must—”
“What has happened to you? Out there?” Jemma thrust an accusing finger at the door. “We have only heard rumors…and…and the sounds.”
Viviana had no time to explain, she needed to see her husband, to tell him, to be comforted by him. Grabbing Jemma by the shoulders, she gave the girl a gentle shake.
“Where…is…my…husband?”
Jemma stared at her mistress as if she had never seen her in her life. The girl pointed to the set of rooms off the right of the foyer. Viviana released the girl, grabbed her skirts, and ran.
Around the short gallery, one hand upon the rail, Viviana dashed to the master’s chamber. There, she saw him through the open door standing before his wardrobe, buttoning his finest doublet, and she flung herself across the threshold.
“Orfeo, thank God.” Viviana rushed to his side.
With a jutting elbow, he pushed her off.
She stumbled backward, astonished but not to be deterred.
“Orfeo, I must tell you what happened…what I have seen—”
“You need tell me nothing.” Her husband spared her a dismissive look over his shoulder as he finished the arrangement of his attire, pulling down upon the frayed edge of his doublet as if doing so allowed his scrawny physique to grow muscles. “A messenger came from Friar di Carlo. I am on my way to the Palazzo della Signoria this very moment.”
“You cannot…” Viviana’s protest dried upon her tongue at a sudden realization.
He knew! As she thought, her husband did know what had happened, where it happened, knew she was there. Yet he uttered not one word of concern, even as she stood before him with a dead man’s blood upon her person; it was as if he stabbed her…the sharpest ignominy.
“Why did you not send word?” The snide accusation slipped from between his teeth. “I expected you would hurry to tell me yourself, rather than letting me find out by an acquaintance.”
“Why did I not…?” Viviana threw hands to her temples, to her ears; it was not condemnation she heard, it could not be. “You know where I was. If you know what happened, you know I was in the thick of it. I barely made it through the streets. I could have been killed. Have you given that any thought?”
She heard it, the deep, dark anger in her plunging voice, the unfamiliar inner self who had been born by such treatment as this. It burned her and she shook with ire. “I have seen things no human should ever see. The face of the devil was no more than inches from me. I held the dying body of Giuliano de’ Medici in my arms.”
“Good,” Orfeo decreed flatly, smoothing the pathetic wires of straggly hair down upon his round pate, applying the pungent goose grease in an attempt to stick it there and hide the advancing baldness. “Perhaps Il Magnifico will award us for your actions.”
“A—award us?” She grabbed his shoulder and spun him round. “The world has gone mad, Orfeo. The man’s family has been attacked. The government is under attack. Are you truly foolish enough to care about award in this upheaval?”
With a whirling hand, he threw off her hold, and she stumbled backward. She saw him then; the man who had alienated himself from any political or financial ally, the man who had squandered her inheritance, and the man who blamed everyone save himself for his troubles.
“I am no fool,” he hissed, snarling, trying to stand tall enough to loom over her; he was too small a man in every sense. “A man who can make himself useful in a crisis is a man valued. This could be my chance.”
Viviana almost gagged; she longed to spit in the face of such self-absorption, of such disregard for others’ devastation. In her husband’s black eyes, she saw the same lunacy as in Francesco de’ Pazzi’s.
She said nothing—did nothing—to keep him there for a moment longer.
Her silence worked and Viviana knew, in Orfeo’s delusional mind, he took it as a victory. She cared not a whit.
With one last glance in the cloudy looking glass, Orfeo quit the room without another word or gesture.
Viviana listened as he thumped down the stairs, threw open the door, and slammed it behind him. She ran from the virulent man’s room to her sitting room through the adjoining door, one she had dreamed of barring more times than she could count.
Even here, among her lovely things, among her silly trifles and frothy covered pillows and colorful chairs and settees, she found no solace. Viviana paced the room—from her sofa to her table to the window and back, a triangular path taking her nowhere. Confusion and uncertainty plagued her; she could not reconcile all she had seen to the Florence she had always known.
“Marcello, Rudolfo.” Without conscious thought, the names of her sons slipped from her tongue. They were all that mattered now…her children, her friends, and their secret work.
Viviana found herself by her settee once more and there she dropped hard to her knees.
“Please dear God, powers of Divinity, please watch over my sons.” She dropped her head into her hands, her hands upon the pale sage silk. Both her boys—young men in the prime of life—were staunch supporters of the Medici, she knew they would put themselves in danger for the powerful family; it could both protect them and put them in harm’s way.
“Protect my sisterhood, dear Lord, for they are worthy of your care; without them I am of little consequence.” Viviana had no way of knowing where the other members of her secret group were in the miasma outside her door, she hoped only for their safety. They had saved her life, though they didn’t know it; the women, their work, and the guild of secret artists they created had given her a renewed jest for life when she had begun to almost long for its end.
For hours, Viviana rocked upon her knees. It was then that his face materialized in her mind.
“Keep him safe. Oh please, keep him safe.”
She cried then…not for her sons, or the society, or the man whose face lingered always in her mind. She cried for the Medici, for the Pazzi so filled with hate, for all fiorentini whose lives would never again be the same. She cried for herself, the illness to body and mind from the last few hours finally bringing her low. Still, she could not bring herself to forego the habits and duty of so many years.
“And watch over Orfeo, for he is far too stupid to do so himself.”