After Giacomo came to my house, exploding the remaining shards of my peace, I lived in fear that he would try to see me again, not because I worried I might find his lewd advances irresistible, but because further angering him could push him to expose my secret or find some other way to ruin me. As weeks went by without hearing from him, I started to feel a slim hope. Perhaps he would heed my words and leave me alone. I prayed it would be so, and, so far as I could tell, it appeared the Lord was listening.
That first year of my widowhood shaped the rest of my life. Some of the choices I made met with criticism. I kept to myself, alienated the few friends I had, and saw my family only rarely. I was grieving a husband who had treated me with kindness, but I was also giving careful thought to what I wanted as I entered this new stage. What mattered to me? What did I value? What kind of world did I want Bia to inhabit? I considered my own childhood, the best parts of which were the times spent with my grandfather. Now, as an adult, I pulled him closer.
I hosted dinners for him and his humanist friends. I studied Neoplatonism and argued with them about it. After my experience with Giacomo, I had stayed away from books. Now, at last, I returned to them. I went back to my Greek and Latin, until I had mastered both languages. I patronized artists whose ideas—and ideals—mirrored my own. I was wealthy enough to never need worry about money, but not so outrageously rich that anyone paid much attention to me.
I saw to it that Bia was educated in the manner of a Medici heir, under the tutelage of some of the most brilliant minds of our time. Her natural curiosity bore no bounds. My grandfather claimed he saw me in her.
“Sometimes she gets a glint in her eyes that is identical to yours,” he said as we sat in the Sala dei Pappagalli after he had dined with us. It was late, and Bia long ago sent to bed.
“If so, it’s nothing but coincidence. She’s not mine and cannot have inherited any trait from me,” I said.
“She is yours in all the ways that matter and you will eventually be unable to deny how many traits you share. Not everything about us is defined by our physicality. Our environment shapes us as well, maybe even more. It is a credit to you that you accepted her so readily, and a credit to her that she, from the beginning, allowed you to mother her.”
“What choice did either of us have?” I asked.
He laughed. “You are in possession of a brilliant mind, Mina, but I see you have not lost all of your girlish naïveté, despite now being six and twenty. Many ladies in your place would not have welcomed the child of their husband’s mistress into their home. And many such children would have resented their father’s wife, given that their own mothers were relegated to a far lower position in society.”
“I suppose so, but why bother? What would it accomplish save to make everyone miserable? Bia is a delight. I’ve always been grateful for her. She adored her father, and he deserved to be loved like that.”
“Indeed. He was a good man and you were a good wife to him.”
I could see in the way he was looking at me that he knew I’d never adored Agnolo, but I could also see that he did not judge me for it. Passionate love was something no reasonable person expected from marriage. “As good a wife as I could be.”
“Plenty good enough,” he said. “I did not come here to discuss marriage, however. I want to talk to you about something else, Mina. My books. My personal library is large, too large for many houses. When I die, I want you to have it, but I do not require that you keep every book.”
“I should sooner cut off my hand than get rid of a book.”
“You are a good girl and I believe you, but there may be times in the future when you feel differently. I have drawn up a list of the volumes in my collection that are the most important. Not because they are necessarily rare or beautiful, but because of the ideas found in them. You know that I spent much of my youth hunting through monastic libraries in search of ancient works long forgotten. It was a thrilling pursuit, dangerous at times, and illuminating. But not everyone, even in this enlightened city of ours, sees value in what the ancients wrote. The Church often finds threats in such things.”
“The friar at San Marco certainly does. I’ve heard him preach.”
“Savonarola is a dangerous man,” he said. “He stirs up fear.”
“Fortunately, not many take his words to heart,” I said.
“Not yet, at least. My friend Lorenzo will not rule Florence forever. He is mortal like the rest of us. Piero, his heir, is a fine soldier, but I fear he has not inherited his father’s head for politics. If he cannot maintain control of the city, who knows what will happen? In times of crisis, any populace is far more vulnerable than usual to religious extremism.”
“This is not Savonarola’s first time in Florence,” I said. “He was here years ago and garnered so little support that he left.”
“It is a different time now. I do not mean to frighten you, only to implore you to promise me that these important books don’t get lost again. I remember so well the first time I read De Rerum Natura, written by that brilliant Epicurean, Lucretius. Poggio Bracciolini, a dear friend of mine who died before you were born, found the manuscript somewhere in Germany. You have read it, Mina, and know the power of the ideas it contains. It teaches us not to fear death.”
“And denies the possibility of an afterlife,” I said. “The Church would never condone the notion, but neither has it forbidden us to read and discuss the book. Many great theologians study the ancients. It informs their own work.”
“Imagine if Poggio hadn’t uncovered the manuscript. Imagine if we had no knowledge of Lucretius, no Aristotle, no Cicero. What would it mean for our great thinkers today to have no grounding in those ideas? As I said, I do not want to scare you, Mina. I consider you the heir to my ideas. Your father has never shown much interest in them, nor do your brothers. You alone understand and respond to them in the way I had once hoped they would. As a result, you will be the one responsible for guarding my legacy. I do not know what Florence will face in the future, only that there are bound to be as many disasters as there are triumphs. I would like to know that you will do whatever is necessary to ensure that these books will never be forgotten. Remember the words of Lucretius: Sic volvenda aetas commutat tempora rerum. / Quod fuit in pretio, fit nullo denique honore. So rolling time changes the seasons of things. What was of value, becomes in turn of no worth.”
“I will make sure that never happens, at least not in Florence. It is an honor to be entrusted with so noble a task,” I said. “I will do as you ask.”
“I know you will. There is one other thing. Do you remember this cameo, the one Lorenzo gave me long ago?” He pulled it out of his pocket and handed it to me.
“I do,” I said. “Minerva in profile, expertly carved.”
“Before I die, I will give this to a man I trust above all others. He is honest and good. Should you ever come under threat because of what I have asked you to do, he will help you. He will identify himself by showing you the cameo.”
“What is his name?”
“You don’t need to know that, not now. If you did, you might unknowingly put him at risk by mentioning it or by finding yourself startled should you happen to meet him.”
“But I won’t be able to reach him if I do need him.”
“Never fear, he will find you.” He rose, offered me his hand, and I stood with him. He embraced me. “You are the brightest light of my old age, Mina. Remember that, always.”
I walked him through the loggia and watched as he set off back to his own house, wondering how much longer I would have him in my life. The natural order demanded that he die before me, but what consolation was natural order? Losing him would gut me. His death, whenever it came, would lay bare for me the true depths of grief.